


Toujours pur

by Veralynn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Auror Harry Potter, Azkaban, Blood, Down and Out Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy in Azkaban, F/M, Horcruxes, Hurt Draco Malfoy, M/M, Pain, Prison, Prison Sex, Sad Draco Malfoy, Secrets, Sectumsempra Scars (Harry Potter), True Love, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 20,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24375178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veralynn/pseuds/Veralynn
Summary: "Malfoy would never confess truth  to an enemy, and we’re enemies to him. That’s way I  made a   plan.”“A  rat,” Harry  said.“Exactly.  Someone I can  trust one hundred  per cent about You-Know-Who. Someone  who knows  well Malfoy  and his past. That  makes you the perfect candidate.”
Comments: 107
Kudos: 219





	1. A delicate issue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GallaPlacidia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallaPlacidia/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Toujours pur](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/624913) by Vera Lynn. 



> Hello! English is not my mother tongue and I don't have a beta so yeah, it will be full of mistakes as I'm translating the story by myself. But that's the only way for me to share with you my work. So, sorry for the mistakes. Let me know if you enjoy the story!

A delicate issue

And after a while, you can work on points for style  
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake  
A certain look in the eye and an easy smile  
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to  
So that when they turn their backs on you,  
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

(Dogs, Pink Floyd)

Harry Potter was happy. War was over, he had three wonderful sons with his dreams’ girl.  
He was an auror: a natural derivation of his history. He was an influent voice in the Minister choices, although politics things were not his direct occupation. He was a powerful, brilliant man and he was fearless: Death Eaters were dead or in prison, and Voldemort shadow was not on his life anymore.

Till that day.

Robbard, his boss, called him for a case he defined “urgent and reserved.”  
Harry was surprised, because there wasn’t any sympathy between him and Robbards. They had very different ideas about interrogations, cases, relationships with the Minister, internal politics and actually about everything. Harry felt that Robbard thought he was just there because of his name. For this reason, almost challenging him, he was assigned to the most boring cases and he never worked alone, till that moment.

Harry knocked on Robbard’s office door.

“It is a delicate issue,” said Robbard. “Take a drink.”

Harry sat and drank a bit of Firewhiskey from the glass Robbard had offered.

“I don’t know how you’ll react, but there are some bad rumors in Azkaban.”

“Rumors about what?”

“It seems…” Robbard hesitated. “It seems that might exist another Horcrux.”

Harry swallowed. Another Horcrux? That wasn’t possible.

“I saw Voldemort die.”

“That is certain, Harry. But… he’s been seen dying a lot of times, and somehow he managed to come back.”

Harry shook his head. “No. I’d feel it. This scar connects me to him.”

“Of course, you’d feel it… but you wouldn’t if your connection was tied to the Horcrux living in you, or if his soul is still inside an Horcrux in a non-vital state. If it is like that, we must find that Horcrux and destroy it before it finds a vector, a living being.”

Harry looked at Robbard. It made sense. Suddenly, the idea of that monster returning became real. Returning to a world where his children lived…  
“This rumours… where they come from? How can we be sure that is true?”  
“Only one Death Eater escaped the Kiss, as you surely know.”  
And yes, Harry knew it. He thought of the sunken eyes of Draco Malfoy waiting for the response of his trial. He thought of his witness, as impartial as possible: yes, Draco Malfoy tried to kill, no, he didn’t, yes, he let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, yes, he lowered his wand in front of Dumbledore, no, when they were caught he didn’t recognize them, or pretended to…

No more and no less than the truth. Harry felt that was right like that. Malfoy was responsible for very bad things. He tried to kill Ron, and he was indirectly responsible for many deaths: Fred, Remus, Dora, Colin… So many others.

And if Harry’s witness for Narcissa Malfoy gave her the absolution, that scarce exposition of the facts spared Malfoy his life and soul, but not prison.

“Twenty-four years in Azkaban”, said Robbard. Harry nodded. That was Wizengamot sentence.  
Malfoy was the only Death Eater saved from the Kiss.  
“We don’t have certainties,” Robbard said. “But these rumours, in some prisoner’s versions, are related to Malfoy. He would also have said…” Robbard read from some papers on his board “….that Dark Lord will rise again, and he will be clement with his minions, and cruel to his enemies. Another states that Malfoy said to him: you’re still in time to join the ranks of our beloved Lord.”  
Harry frowned. So, no doubt: Wizengamot was right. Malfoy wasn’t a victim of the circumstances, he was a Death Eater to his bone.

And Harry be damned if Voldemort ever came back.

“I presume you have already interrogated him.”  
“I took care of that interrogation personally,” said Robbard. “As you will understand, Harry, it is necessary absolute privacy. True or false, the idea of a possible return of You-Know -Who would just spread panic. And if anyone knows, we couldn’t distingue what rumours are worth our attention.”  
“Of course I understand. What did come out of the interrogation?” Harry had a flash of Robbard-Style – Interrogations, that usually he found disgusting as they were too violent, based on drugs, blackmails and panic, but this time he didn’t care about the how, he wanted to know if it was true, if Voldemort would come back.

“Nothing at all. Malfoy is a trained soldier. He can elude Veritaserum and resist coercition. It was predictable. Whoever has been exposed to Cruciatus isn’t startled by minor spells, and it is illegal to use Unforgivables. Malfoy would never confess truth to an enemy, and we’re enemies to him. That’s way I made a plan.”

Harry understood.

“A rat,” he said.

“Exactly. Someone I can trust one hundred per cent about You-Know-Who. Someone who knows well Malfoy and his past. That makes you the perfect candidate.”


	2. The worst  criminal in England.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! English is not my mother tongue and I don't have a beta so yeah, it will be full of mistakes as I'm translating the story by myself. But that's the only way for me to share with you my work. So, sorry for the mistakes. Let me know if you enjoy the story!

When Harry entered the small cell, with a bag in his hand, the first thing he noticed was the smell.  
It was sickening. It was a smell of putrefaction, rotten, death and it was unexplicable, because in the cell there were just the iron bunk bed with two tiny mattresses and a steel toilet that looked clean and in fine working order.

Draco Malfoy lied on the upper bunk under a tattered cover, a book in his hand. He let his naked arm slip beyond the edge of the bed. The Dark Mark it was clearly visible.

“Ehm… hello?”  
Malfoy didn’t answered, but he leaned over to look at him. He didn’t show any sign of recognition. Polyjuyce was working well. Harry was now a stocky guy with blue eyes, shaved hair and big teeth.

“I’m Jay, your new cellmate.”  
“Do you know who I am?”  
Harry almost smiled.  
“What the fuck is funny?”  
“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

Malfoy stared at him. “I am Draco Malfoy, I am the one who provoked a massacre at Hogwarts, I am a Death Eater and it is your best interest not to piss me off. Is that clear? Got it, Jay?

For a moment Malfoy looked almost threatening. Was it possible that Azkaban changed him so much?  
“Got it or not?”  
“Yes.”  
“Fine.”  
Malfoy turned his gaze on the book.  
“Ehm… Are there other things I ought to know? It is the first time I… I get arrested and…”  
“Stay away from my bunk. If you get on this bunk, I’ll break your legs. And keep your fucking mouth shut.”  
Harry tried to get closer, but Malfoy pushed him down.  
“Is it an advice? Thanks, because I…”  
“It’s a warning. Keep you fucking mouth shut. I’m reading.”

With that he started reading again. Harry sat on his bunk. He had read Malfoys’ files but there wasn’t much in there: Harry knew that Malfoy has a medical condition, that he wasn’t allowed to receive visits from his mother because of some stupid rule that forbid any contact between former Death Eaters, and that nobody else had applied for visits. As for letters, Malfoy could write and receives them once a month, and those letters were always controlled. Harry had asked to see them, but there weren’t copies, except for Narcissa’s letters that should be somewhere in the cell. Harry could read whatever he’d write from now on, but for that he should wait a pair of weeks. Otherwise, there weren’t information about what Malfoy could have done in those eleven years in Azkaban.

That first day with Malfoy was really boring. Malfoy read his book for hours, got off his bunk, threatened him death if he didn’t turn to the wall, and peed. After that, he climbed back onto the bunk and started reading again. Staying there doing nothing at all, with that awful smell, was agonizing.

“Where does this smell come from?”

Malfoy’s book hit his head.

“Are you mentally retarded, Jay? What wasn’t clear in ‘keep your fuckin’ mouth shut’?”

“This smell is sickening.”

Unexpectedly, Malfoy laughed. “Sickening? Sorry, princess, Azkaban isn’t chic enough for you, I see…. If you’d prefer we could move to the Ritz.”

Harry felt like they were thirteeen years old again. But he had extablished a connection.  
Malfoy was studying him.  
“Tell me, Jay, what might a kid like you have done to end up in the worst criminal of England’s cell?”  
The worst criminal of England? Really? Harry told his cover- story: Jay Roxen counterfeit some Potions and it ended with three deaths and a manslaughter charge. He wasn’t a dangerous criminal: he was an ignorant with confused ideas, but he was racist enough toward the Mudblood, his blood wasn’t the most pure, but it was enough pure for Malfoy considering him deign of conversation. Most of all, Jay Roxen had to appear in Malfoy’s eyes harmless and malleable.

Malfoy looked at him with a smirk. “Well,” he said. “Welcome to Hell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd be glad for any review, even for grammatical correction! Help me improve my writing and my English. Thanks for reading.


	3. A life lesson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! English is not my mother tongue and I don't have a beta so yeah, it will be full of mistakes as I'm translating the story by myself. But that's the only way for me to share with you my work. So, sorry for the mistakes. Let me know if you enjoy the story!

And so was Azkaban. Malfoy’s average day, as Harry found out, was bleak. The only events were the meals, served on plastic trays from a slot in the door. The slop smell was more or less disgusting as the cell smell. Besides that, there were two glasses of water. In one of the two bowls there was a spit.  
Harry stared uncertain at the bowls.  
“The one with the spit is mine,” said Malfoy from the upper bunk, without even looking, and laughed.  
Harry was disgusted, but, surprisingly, eating a bowl of smelling slop with a spit inside didn’t seem to be a problem for Malfoy.   
“Pass the tray” he ordered.   
Despite the total absence of courtesy, Harry obeyed. After all, Malfoy spared him the bowl with the spit, God knew why. He thought how to investigate the matter, but there was no need, as Malfoy spoke first, looking like he had the truth in his pocket.  
“They do it on purpose,” he said, moving the spit aside with his spoon, “they want us to fight each other.” 

“Why?” Harry was trying to hide his disgust for the food flavor – if Draco got this tough, He wouldn’t dare complaining. He gulped some water and recognized the acid flavor of the potion that would make Polyjuice effect last more.  
“Divided we fall. We are weaker,” Malfoy explained. “Plus, if we kill each other, they’re not responsible.”  
Harry’s blood turned a little cold. He wondered if it was true, or Malfoy was just being paranoid.  
“Listen, I can help you surviving in here.”  
Harry pondered what kind of answer Malfoy was expecting. “And what do you expect in return?”  
Malfoy laid the spoon and drank some water. “That you help me.”

Malfoy’s theory was simple and terrible: it was harder to overcome Azkaban alone. Joining forces was the only way for both of them to make it out alive. If they would fight each other, they were screwed, and they would just play the guards game.

It seemed that for Malfoy the guards were a bunch of sadistic killers that just want them dead. Harry listened trying to figure out if Malfoy was just being melodramatic or if there was some truth. Malfoy looked like himself, but he was also different somehow. On the one hand, Harry thought that he was exaggerating: a spit was disgusting, but hardly lethal. On the other, the aplombe Malfoy showed about that, eating his bowl without a complain, indicated an habit, and an habit of this kind was a sign of reiterated unpleasant treatment.

Or, as in his Slytherin nature, Malfoy was just trying to scare him or manipulate him into something?

“Aren’t you a bit exaggerated? They’re Aurors after all. They made a vow. They can’t commit violence on prisoners.”  
Malfoy laughed. “I’ll give you a life lesson,” he said acting like a old expert convict - that made Harry almost laugh with him - “There aren’t good and evil people. There are winners and losers. That’s all.”  
Harry wasn’t affected by this rethorical quote. Of course, there were winners and losers. But there were also good and evil people: truth was, good people had won, and evil people had lost.  
“Do you know Harry Potter, the Great Hero, Golden Boy of Magic World? Do you wanna know where this smell come from?”  
For a moment Harry, startled because Malfoy had used his name, didn’t get why those two questions were made together, without a change of tone. He really didn’t get it.  
Then Malfoy sat on his bunk and stared at him. “I’m gonna show you something,” he said, and he took off his shirt.  
Harry stared at Malfoy’s torso. It was bandaged with bloody rags, tiny rags of cloth that must had been a light blue but were now red and brown of fresh and old blood.

“We were still at Hogwarts,” Malfoy said. “Of course we weren’t friends, but this didn’t happen in a battle. That psycho followed me everywhere. He waited till I was alone and…”  
Malfoy hexitated and Harry realized, and thought no, no, it isn’t possible that…  
“…and he throwed a Sectumsempra to me. Do you know this spell? Of course you don’t. It’s Dark magic. So Dark that no one speaks about it, it isn’t taught at Defense, it isn’t in the books. It doesn’t mean anything to you that the Magic World’s hero simply know a spell like that?”

Harry was shocked. The image of Malfoy writhing in a pool of blood spurting from his torso on that bathroom floor came to his mind as he was still there with his wand out.  
I didn’t know it, he desperately thought, I didn’t know it… and he tried, maybe to defend himself in front of himself, to remind Malfoy that no, he didn’t attack him for no reason, he was defending himself from an Unforgivable.  
“Did he attack you for no reason?”  
He was almost certain that Malfoy would say yes, trying to pass for the victim, but he shook his head.  
“I was casting a Cruciatus. Wasn’t fast enough.”  
“And why did you do it?” Harry wondered if he’d say the truth, admitting that he was crying in that forgotten bathroom, scared, upset, that he casted the curse to him just because he saw him crying.  
“Because I wanted him to stop following me everywhere.” And so he knew Malfoy’s truth. “But it was just a Cruciatus.”  
“It is an Unforgivable!”  
“Please. I’d make it last a few seconds. It was just to scare him. Cruciatus doesn’t scar if you use if for a few seconds. I didn’t get scars from that and I took it for hours.”  
Harry swallowed. This trip into Malfoy’ point of view was overcoming the simple mission about the Horcrux. It was reminding him of many unpleasant things he would gladly forget forever.  
And… and well, for the first time, looking at the infected, badly bandaged wounds on Malfoy’s torso, he thought that maybe Malfoy, in his hate towards him, hade some points.  
“Sectumsempra lasts forever. It literally means: cut forever. It is a killing curse like AK, but a curse to kill in a slow, painful way. Our Saint Potter, uhu?” Malfoy laughed again. Harry wanted to cry.  
“They took me just in time. He had tried to kill me. Know what he said? I didn’t know the effects! Figures. What kind of idiot casts a spell without knowing the effects? Potter’s an asshole, but he’s not that stupid. And they all pretended to believe that bullshit. They didn’t accuse him. They didn’t expel him. They didn’t even suspend him, for Circe’s fucking cunt. Nobody said him a thing. And now he’s the Magic World Hero and I’m in this fucking hole for attempted murder.” Injustice burned in his voice. “It’s a total double standard, Jay. One for the winners, one for the losers. Get it in your stupid brain.”  
And with that the lesson was apparently over, for Malfoy. He started to put on his shirt again.  
“And how did you… there isn’t a counter-spell?” Harry remembered pretty well Snape pronouncing it over Malfoy’s unconscious body. Vulnera Sanentur.  
“Obviously there is a counter-spell,” said Malfoy in a condescending tone, as he got dressed. “But his effects are limited in time. When I was out, it was enough to cast it one or two times a day. The skin stayed intact. It didn’t even break. But here…” Malfoy frowned, and Harry heard the shameful subtext, wandless… “I asked many times, but apparently inmates are entitled only to medical care that serves to keep them alive. In a nutshell, it means I’m entitled to receive the counter-spell once a week, when the wounds are so opened that with another centimeter they’d reach my heart. That’s what you smell. It’s my blood. And although I ask for that all the fucking time, they don’t wanna give me clean bandages or new covers or even change my mattress. For my own sake. You know, I could hang myself with a 10 cm-bandage. Or suffocate myself with a cover. Or, I don’t know, kill myself with a mattress?” Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Do you know what will happen? One day they’ll forget to come to get me for the counter-spell. Or the nurse will be on vacation. Or there will be some misunderstanding. And that day, bye bye Draco Malfoy. It was nice to have you here in Azkaban.”

Malfoy’s mood had clearly worsened and he wasn’t talkative anymore.   
He lied on his mattress that, as Harry now knew, was impregnated with old blood.   
“Double standard, Jay. Never forget.”  
And with that, he turned to the wall.   
Harry stayed silent. His heart was beating fast, with all he wanted to say, and couldn’t, as here in Azkaban he was Jay Roxen, the cover of an Auror infiltrated to get informations from Draco Malfoy, and not Harry Potter, the beloved hero, guilty, for mistake or for neglect, of having almost killed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd be glad for any review, even for grammatical correction! Help me improve my writing and my English. Thanks for reading.


	4. Any news, Princess?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! English is not my mother tongue and I don't have a beta so yeah, it will be full of mistakes as I'm translating the story by myself. But that's the only way for me to share with you my work. So, sorry for the mistakes. Let me know if you enjoy the story!

Night was quiet. In the morning Malfoy took out with caring gestures the rags of rotten bandages from his torso. Harry was freaked out by the extensions of his wounds, he wondered when they’ll give him the counter-spell and why was he taking the bandages out. This he discovered soon: two guards came to get them to shower. Malfoy’s wounds, horrific to see, didn’t seem to impress the other inmates. Two of them came closer and one touched Malfoy’s hip in a way that Harry didn’t like.  
“Any news, Princess?”  
“He’s coming back.” Malfoy pushed away the man’s hand and Harry shivered. Malfoy showed the Mark to those men. “He’s Calling.” Harry looked. Malfoy’s skin was red around the Mark. Harry felt his heart beating too fast and tried to stay silent, to listen.  
“And he won’t be pleased if his last minion is called Princess, Cox” said Malfoy with a voice as cold as ice, and Cox stepped back.  
“I’ll call you at the right time. Now piss off.” Said Malfoy with despise. Cox and his friend disappeared. Malfoy opened the shower knob. Harry peeked at him. In contact with water, the wounds bled profusely. It must be painful. Malfoy gritted his teeth, but he didn’t make a sound. He washed carefully his arm and torso and the rest of his body. Harry looked at him: he had been athletic, once. Now he seemed underweight, and his skin was too pale, almost grey. He hung on to the wall, and Harry understood. Malfoy was sick, very sick, and he was hiding it the best he could.

He should have asked him about Voldemort.  
Instead when they were back in the cell he asked: “Are you all right?”  
Malfoy stared at him. “’M fine” he said, and Harry was certain it was a lie.  
“You hung on to the wall, in the showers. You lost a lot of blood. Do you feel dizzy?"  
“I’m fine,” Malfoy repeated. “Mom.” But he hung on to the wall again and a moment before losing consciousness he sat on the floor.

“Do you want help?"  
Malfoy said nothing. He didn’t even look at him.  
Harry was about to take Malfoy’s bandages, but they were too dirty. He could get an infection. He tore some strips from his cover. “Here, take these.”  
“It’s useless,” said Malfoy. “In a week they’ll be as dirty as the others.”  
'Thank you' wasn’t in Malfoy’s vocabulary, evidently. Harry bandaged his torso. Malfoy's body was hot. For how long he has been feverish?  
“You’re welcome,” said Harry, and for a moment he touched his Dark Mark.

He felt nothing. He touched his own forehead. Jay Roxen didn’t have the scar, maybe that was the reason he didn’t get visions? Or that power was lost when he killed the Horcrux inside him? Was Voldemort actually coming back? Was he in contact with Malfoy? Why the fuck he couldn’t stand idly by when he bit his lips for pain?  
Was it because of he was the one that opened those wounds?  
“Jay.”  
Maybe it was because he was getting to know another version of Malfoy, one that didn’t hate him?  
“Jay.”  
Or maybe because that was how he was, he couldn’t just stare another person suffering and do nothing?  
“Jay… there’s a cigarette hidden behind the toilet.”  
He suddenly remembered he was Jay. “I don’t smoke.”  
“Barter it with something you want,” answered Malfoy. He stood up and staggered to his awfully smelling bed. Harry watched as he climbed and curled under the remains of his cover.  
“Thanks” Harry whispered.  
“You’re welcome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd be glad for any review, even for grammatical correction! Help me improve my writing and my English. Thanks for reading.


	5. Bishop in E6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! English is not my mother tongue and I don't have a beta so yeah, it will be full of mistakes as I'm translating the story by myself. But that's the only way for me to share with you my work. So, sorry for the mistakes. Let me know if you enjoy the story!

The day after Malfoy was so sick Harry thought he would die. For an entire day he lied on his bed doing nothing at all, without even reading his book, while his wounds bled and Harry tried in vain to conversate. He wasn’t even able to eat. Harry helped him drink a sip of water and tried in vain to call the guards for help. For his own safety, the only one that knew his true identity was Robbard. But Robbard wasn’t there and the guards ignored Jay Roxen’s claims.  
Harry feared that Malfoy wouldn’t make it through the night.

Instead, in the morning he was still alive. So weak the guards who came in the cell to bring him to the infirmary had practically to drag him.  
Harry thought that handcuffing his hands behind his back was an unnecessary humiliation, and even more the additional security measure: a gag preventing him to bite, as he was some rabid dog. Yes, Malfoy was a maximum-security prisoner, but this kind of measure, that could be understandable if applied to Greyback’s minions, was just absurd applied to him, even more absurd considered the state he was. Harry realized that besides the humiliation, at the only time Malfoy would meet someone that wasn’t a guard or an inmate, he wouldn’t be able to speak.

Malfoy didn’t show any resistance to be shackled and gagged and let them drag him away. Half an hour later he was back looking much better and when they freed and ungagged him and went away, he smiled. A true smile.  
“Monday! The best day in the week!”  
His skin was a healthy shade of pink. He took off his dirty shirt and his rotten bandages: the skin of his torso was smooth and completely healed.  
He looked like a different person… and it had took just two words. Harry decided he would have insisted with Robbard for Malfoy to receive the counter-spell at least once a day, even if that took that humiliating trip in chains. And that wasn’t because he felt responsible for those wounds… even if Malfoy was a delinquent, leaving him to bleed almost to death when in a few seconds he could be healed, was just cruel.  
“I’m happy for you,” said Harry, and it was true.  
Malfoy was energic. “Let’s celebrate”, he said. “Can you play chess?”  
“Yes.”  
“Fantastic. Bishop in E6.”  
“But…”  
“Earth to Jay? Can’t summon a chessboard. Use your imagination.”  
Harry tried. He was bad with a normal chessboard, even more without. Malfoy won eight times.  
“Enough,” said Harry. “No contest.”  
“You’ve got time to improve. Let’s try again.”  
Harry was about to argue, but he realized that Jay was all Malfoy – who’s been recluded in that cell for eleven years with the perspective of passing there the next thirteen – had currently at disposition to not lose his mental sanity. They played for hours. Harry won once.  
“Good! Let’s play another game.”  
“What game?”  
“Dunno. Let’s invent one.”  
Harry was admired - reluctantly – by Malfoy’s ability to fight apathy. In his situation, he would probably spend the day bumping his head against the wall. They played “Guess who”.  
“Is he male?”  
“Yes.”  
“Alive?”  
“Yes.”  
“Did he fight?”  
“Yes.”  
“On our side?”  
Harry hesitated. “No.”  
“Young?”  
“Yes?”  
“Scarred and obnoxious?”  
Harry smiled. “Yes.”  
“Potter. Too easy. My turn. Go.”  
“Is he male?”  
“Yes.”  
“Did he fight?”  
“Yes.”  
“Did he die?”  
Malfoy’s voice broke for an instant. “Yes.”  
“Did you know him in person?”  
“Yes.”  
“Did he fight for V… for the Dark Lord?”  
“Yes. No. Not exactly.”  
“Snape.”  
Draco nodded.  
“But he betrayed, didn’t he?”  
Draco nodded again. Harry noticed he’d got goose bumps. It was the right time.  
“Malfoy,” he said. “A few days ago… in the showers. I’ve overheard you… talking with Cox.”  
“Hmm-m.”  
“Is that true? Is the Dark Lord coming back?”  
“Stay out of this.”  
“I’d like to join his ranks. If he’s coming back.”  
Draco looked at him. “Join his ranks,” he repeated, cautiously.  
“Aren’t you collecting followers?”  
Malfoy sneered. “Do you want to be a Death Eater?”  
“Yes.”  
“Why?”  
“Mudbloods must be stopped.” Even saying something like that disgusted Harry, but he had to convince Malfoy to trust him. “They’re a danger for the magic world. I cannot understand why they let them into Hogwarts and into the institutions.”  
Malfoy stared at him. “Couldn’t agree with you more. You know, my blood line is very ancient,” he said looking thoughtful. “The Malfoys existed for centuries but I…” he hesitated. “I’m the last one. There were many other branches of the family… that ended in fire.” Malfoy’s hand twitched. “They burnt us at the stake. All of us. Just a little part of my father’s family managed to escape death. Now he’s been Kissed too. I am the last,” Malfoy repeated. The end of the dynasty, got Harry, and he noticed this information in his mind. “So yes. They must be stopped. People forgot. They forgot when Muggles hunted us with stones and sticks, persecuted us, burnt us at the stake. They raped girls and killed them. They put up up trials where who was found with magic blood was tortured, forced to drink vinegar or…” He stopped a moment, lost in some memories of medieval tortures. “… burnt alive.” He concluded.  
And for the first time Harry understood Malfoy’s ideas about blood. Didn’t thought they were right, obviously, but he understood where they came from: terror.  
“Let me join the Death Eaters.”  
“It’s not my decision. The Dark Lord will decide, when he’ll be back.”  
“And when will he be back?”  
“Soon,” Malfoy answered. “He’s very close.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd be glad for any review, even for grammatical correction! Help me improve my writing and my English. Thanks for reading.


	6. Bowling

But in the next two days Harry couldn’t get from Malfoy any information about how close He was. Malfoy said him that he would warn him at the right moment and then hermetically closed to the Dark-Lord- subject.  
They spoke about other things. Books, mostly. Malfoy had read a lot: he spent all the time telling him Magical authors’ plots. By the end of those two days, Harry got a bit of culture. He was about to ask Malfoy what book was reading in that moment, when the guards come to get him.  
“Wednesday,” Malfoy commented “They like wednesday.”  
“Come on, shitbag, against the wall, it’s your moment.” Said one of the guards. This time they just shackled Malfoy without gagging him.  
“Where they bring you?”

“Bowling,” Malfoy said, and laughed. Harry watched as they drag him away. 

Harry actually knew where they were bringing him: Robbard had warned him that in parallel to his mission, interrogations would continue. And he understood why Wednesday: Draco wasn’t at his best, but he wasn’t even weak as on Saturday or Sunday, in those days he couldn’t even talk, interrogations would be useless.  
Harry and Robbard would meet after ten days and confront their informations, but Robbard had told him that during interrogations Malfoy would be subjected to Veritaserum, and Harry was to use the opportunity when, still being under the potion’s effect, he would relax back in the cell.

And Draco was back a few hours later, with a black eye and blood dripping from his lip, but smiling. Evidently they didn’t get so much from him. That was negative for Harry’s operation, but a part of him sympathized with Malfoy, admired his temper. The guards untied him and pushed him in the cell. Malfoy shouted: “Good strike, Johnson!” and laughed of his own joke.  
“How are you?”  
“Feel like shit.” Slurred Malfoy, but he was still smiling. The voice and the foul-mouthed language confirmed to Harry that he was under Veritaserum. To the ones that were often subjected to it, Veritaserum caused a loosening of inhibitions, like alcohol.  
“Where did they bring you?”  
“Interrogation.” Said Malfoy and, this time without any worry to be seen, pulled down his trousers and pissed in the toilet.  
“Why do they interrogate you?”  
“Wanna know ‘bout Dark Lord.. they’re shitting their pants.” Giggled Malfoy, pulling up the trousers and climbing on his bunk.  
“Did you say anything to them?”  
“Are you interrogating me too?” Malfoy joked. “Of course not. It takes a lot more to break me,” he acted tough. “And my life’s on the line.” He leaned out. “Listen, did you barter that cigarette in the end?”  
“No.”  
“Mind if I smoke it?”  
“No.” Harry stood up and took the cigarette. There were also matches. He passed cigarette and match to Malfoy.  
He lighted up the cigarette. “Fire from a stick. They’re clever, these Muggles, I have to admit that.”  
“When will the Dark Lord be back?”  
“When will the Dark Lord be back?” Malfoy imitated him. “When will we arrive, mommy? When will little Jay stop whining? Only Merlin knows.”

Bloody hell, Harry too has been trained at the Auror course - to answer the questions with other questions, to joke, to change subject - but Malfoy was really good to elude Veritaserum. His answers seemed completely natural.  
“Stop whining and take a puff,” Malfoy said handing him the cigarette.  
“I don’t smoke.”  
“You’ll start. It helps passing time.” Malfoy said, smoking.  
“It’s bad for the health, you know."  
Malfoy laughed. “And who the fuck cares,” he said. “Strip me also of that and I’ll AK myself.”  
The fact he was talking under Veritaserum made Harry shiver.  
“Why do you say that? Dark Lord is coming back.”  
“Hmm-m.” Malfoy was silent for a moment. Harry was determined not to let it go, now that he had the chance to get true answers from Malfoy. Malfoy has already been interrogated, he would lower his defenses sooner or later.  
“And you’re the last Death Eater, his more faithful follower, isn’t it?”  
“Well, I’m the last, as you said, there are no many terms of comparison.”  
“But He knows you’re faithful.”  
For the first time Malfoy hesitated.  
“You’ve always been faithful,” said Harry, “And you never betrayed him, right?”  
“I served him,” Malfoy cautiosly answered, “I never… once I betrayed him. Twice.” Malfoy became suddenly very pale. “I didn’t mean to say that. I was meaning I failed.”  
“When?”  
“Well, everyone knows.”  
“Dumbledore?”  
“Snape killed him”  
“And the other time? When you didn’t recognize Harry Potter?”  
“Jay, I’ve already been subjected to an interrogation today. Give me a break.”  
But Harry insisted, climbing up to his bunk. “Did you do it on purpose?”  
“Stop asking all these questions. I’m tired.”  
“Did you want to save him?”  
“Stop asking your fucking questions!” Malfoy roared, and Harry felt the crack in his wall of ostentatious confidence.  
“Did you want to save him, isnt’ it? You didn’t want him to die.”  
And Malfoy hit him. He hit him in the face. Harry was so surprised he didn’t react. He fell. “Keep your fucking mouth shut, bloody hell,” cried Malfoy.  
“What about joining forces?”  
But Malfoy had passed his breakpoint. “Fuck off. I’m done. Kill me while I sleep. For what I fuckin’ care.” Malfoy turned to the wall.  
Harry climbed up again.  
“You didn’t want him to die?”  
“Why the fuck you care?”  
“I want…” Harry tried to find a reason for Jay Roxen to care about that matter. He found it. “…I want to know what kind of person you are.” And he discovered that that was also what Harry Potter wanted to know.  
“Do you wanna know?” Draco sat. “I’m the kind who made awful mistakes.”  
“Does it means yes?”  
“It means yes, all right? And you have no fucking idea of the Cruciatus I got for that. I saved that asshole and his traitor friend and his Mudblood friend. I saved them despite this,” he gestured at his torso “And do you wanna know how I was thanked?”  
But Harry already knew. “Twenty-four years in Azkaban,” he said, feeling shame.  
Malfoy raised two fingers in the victory sign. “Exactly.”  
But that was unfair. Harry had saved Draco from Ardemonium.  
“Skeeter’s articles say that he saved you during the battle.”  
“Oh, that’s true. He saved me. And you know what, for a long time I wondered why the fuck he did it. First you try to kill me, then you save my life? I pondered why. I think I found the reason. He saved me,” he explain dramatically “… so I could have been locked up in here, wandless, with this fucking thing consuming my body, he saved me so I’d be in agony in this shithole, and now he’s outside laughing as he thinks of his old enemy crawling on the floor begging for the counter-spell and shitting in front of someone like you in this place of Hell!”  
Harry was silent. Malfoy was being melodramatic, but some drama was real, if he really thought that what he was saying was true. Harry had to bite his lips not to talk back. It’s not true, it’s not true… but it was impossible to say that, impossible to say he didn’t know Sectumsempra had consequences, that he didn’t really think about what Malfoy risked protecting him, that he didn’t think Azkaban’s life was so tough even without Dementors… he swallowed.  
He tried to understand if because of those thoughts Malfoy has convinced himself of his ancient positions, if the hate towards Harry Potter, who left him to rot here, pushed him more into Death Eater cause while he was in prison.  
“And now? What would you do?” He investigated cautiously. “If you could turn back time? Would you hand him to the Dark Lord? Would you kill him?”  
“Past is past.” Said Malfoy. “If you want to stay sane, Jay, stop thinking what if.”  
“But if you could? If you could turn back time? Would you kill him now?”  
“If I could turn back time,” whispered Malfoy exhausted “I’d kill myself.”


	7. My beloved son

Today was the day Malfoy could write to his mother, and also the day Harry would meet Robbard. The guards came to take Malfoy to a place in which they’ll shackle his hands to a table and watch as he wrote. Harry stood alone in the cell and started to search for Narcissa’s previous letters.

He finally found them hidden in Draco’s disgusting mattress. They were a lot. He started reading as fast as he could.

"My beloved son… my dear love… I am worrying for you… are you eating enough? Are they treating you well? I miss you so much my love… I asked again to see you… I love you… Toujours pur."

Every letter ended with that hateful family mot.

For the majority they were variations on Narcissa-Malfoy-worries-for-his-son theme (theme about which Harry tried to ignore his contrasting feelings). But there were some less maternal and more interesting.

"What we planned is about to come true. I must tell you we had to renounce to some family heirlooms to make it possible, but if everything will go as planned, it will be worth it. Soon I’ll give you more details. Toujours pur."

And in another letter:

"It was hard but we made it. Second decade of november, for the stars to be propitious.  
Toujours pur." 

Two years ago more or less, Harry realized reading the date.

"Everything’s going as we planned, Draco. I’m so happy. I feared that we would be destroyed, but we are stronger. I am so proud of you. I’ll handle everything while you are in prison. But you’ll get out. Think about what we’ve been able to do and what is waiting for you.  
Toujours pur."

All that insistence about blood purity irritated Harry almost in a physical way. Narcissa Malfoy hadn’t changed her racist mind a bit. Her final switch had probably been because she saw the danger and decided to save what could be saved. Harry had thought Narcissa’s priority had been to save his son. But the letters seemed to allude to a Voldemort possible return and they didn’t left any doubt on Narcissa’s opinion about the so-said mud blood.

Harry carefully put the letters inside the mattress again. Then a guard came to take him to an Auror that wanted to see him. 

When Harry entered, Robbard handed him the letter Malfoy had wrote to his mother that day.  
“I’d say there’s no doubt left.” 

"Dear mom, how are you? Do not worry, as I already wrote, I’m good. I’ve got a new cellmate. His name is Jay. He is funny. I eat enough. Yes, I eat vegetables. About my duties, let them know I’ll do whatever I can for You-Know-Who. I can’t be at disposal while I’m here, but please pawn or sell what we have left if it is necessary. Say them at soon as I’m out I will do my duty. Thank them for what they did, but expecially bring my gratitude to You-Know-Who. At soon as you can, tell them that I’ll make out of here alive, and I will do everything’s asked from me, and I am grateful that You-Know-Who choose me.  
Toujours pur,  
Draco"

Harry had already thought to ask Robbard to intensify Malfoy’s interrogations, and to drug more often his food with Veritaserum. After all, the day before Malfoy had lost his temper for the first time. Harry was sure that if he could talk another time with a so emotionally unstable Malfoy, he’d be able to get the information he needed. But he had hexitated, he didn’t like violence, and he wasn’t sure he wanted Malfoy to be grilled like that. But now…  
“Destroy him,” he said.  
He forgot to ask for Malfoy’s counter-spell.

Besides confirming that Malfoy was planning Voldemort’s return, Robbard gave Harry news of his family. Ginny was fine, James got an A in school, Lily lost his first tooth, and Albus had learnt to count to five. They sent all their love.  
“We’ll see again tomorrow. Try to get something from him after the interrogation.”

Harry came back to the cell decided to get from Malfoy any fucking information as soon as possible.


	8. We’ll walk out of here  alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! English is not my mother tongue and I don't have a beta so yeah, it will be full of mistakes as I'm translating the story by myself. But that's the only way for me to share with you my work. So, sorry for the mistakes. Let me know if you enjoy the story!

But that day Malfoy didn’t seem about to lose his temper. He was smiling.  
“Chess?”  
“No,” Harry said, frowning.  
“Another game?”  
“No.”  
“What happened?” Malfoy sounded truly worry, and Harry was surprised, it was the first time he sounded like that. “Did something happen with the other inmates? With the guards? Did they…” Malfoy hesitated and Harry just stared at him, frowning “…did they touch you?  
“Jesus, no.” Said Harry and Malfoy looked at him strangely.  
“Did they threaten you? Tell them you’re with me.” He tapped on his arm, on the Dark Mark. “If they bother you, they’ll face the Dark Lord rage.”

Harry knew Jay had to say thanks. “Thanks” he mumbled.  
“Ehi, aren’t we friends? I take care of you, Jay, and you take care of me. I don’t forget kindnesses.”  
Kindnesses. Harry wanted to beat the shit out of him.  
“I’ve got children,” he said instead.  
Malfoy’s expression changed. “What?”  
“I’ve got children,” said Harry-Jay.  
“Are they all right?” Draco sounded worry again. Something in Harry broke.  
“Yes,” he said. He wanted to cry. “My daughter lost his first tooth and I wasn’t there.” And it’s your fuckin’ fault, he added in his mind.   
Malfoy hesitated. “You’ll be there for her once you’ll be out.”  
“But I’m not there now.”  
Malfoy said nothing.  
“I don’t deserve them,” Harry whispered, wondering why he was talking with Malfoy among all. Ten days in Azkaban and he was already losing his mind? How did Malfoy resist eleven years? Or it was because Jay could talk freely as Harry Potter never could?   
“Why, Jay? What are you talking about?”  
“People died because of me.” He thought, if Malfoy says they were just Mudbloods, I’ll beat him. But Malfoy hugged him.  
“It happened. You can’t change past.”  
Those were Malfoy’s thoughts? Harry felt to upset to play detective.  
“I’m tired.”  
“Don’t be.”  
“What should I be.”  
Malfoy’s gaze got lost in the void. “Strong,” he said. “Fearles. Years will pass… faster than you think. Look at me.” Malfoy touched his hand. “We’ll walk out of here alive.” He promised.  
And then did something Harry wasn’t expecting.  
He kissed him.  
Gently, and Harry blushed, but didn’t pull him away. His heart was beating fast as he thought that if Malfoy was attracted to Jay Roxen, that could be useful for his mission.  
For this reason or for his blood pulsing in his veins so fast he couldn’t think, he answered the kiss.  
Malfoy’s hands went to his trousers and Harry panicked. He pushed him away.  
Malfoy looked away and blushed. Eyes on the ground, he climbed to his bunk.  
Harry’s heart was still pounding. “Malfoy. Ehi, Malfoy.”  
“I apologize.” It was a whisper. “I am sorry.”  
Harry was about to answer but he stopped. It was the first time in his entire life that he heard Malfoy apologizing. This hadn’t anything to do with Voldemort and Malfoy looked as he might cry. What right he had to insist? He lied on his bunk, trying to think. 

He had contrasting feelings. A part of him – Jay? – admired Malfoy’s temper, his ability to stay sane, and was grateful for his kindness. Another part of him hated Malfoy, wanted to push him against the wall and get every possible information about Voldemort to him with an iron bar.  
But that was not what he had to do. He had to conquer his trust.   
And then this sudden kiss. Out of any war scheme, out of spy operations, out of any mental image he had of Malfoy. He couldn’t find a reason for that kiss to be manipulative, or part of a Voldemort’s plan. That kiss was pure Malfoy one hundred per cent. What right did he have to punish him for being, for once in his life, himself?  
Harry stayed in his bunk until he heard Malfoy moving in his. He climbed to the upper bunk.  
“Chess?”  
The shadow of a smile. “Why not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd be glad for any review, even for grammatical correction! Help me improve my writing and my English. Thanks for reading.


	9. Let me die

It wasn’t Wednesday. Malfoy was surprised when the guards came to get him for the interrogation. “You can’t live without me, isn’t it, Johnson?” He joked. Johnson hit him in the face. Malfoy swore and smiled.

Harry waited. When he’d be back, he would take advantage of the Veritaserum in his system and this time he’d ask the right questions. He would discover where the fuck this Horcrux was, if it had found a vector - that was probable, judging from Malfoy’s letter – and he would go the fuck away from that shithole, far from Malfoy’s pain and messed kisses, he’d be back to Ginny, James, Lily, Albus, he’d play with his children and he’d order some pizza from Luigi’s.  
Or, at least, this he planned while he waited.  
But when they brought back Malfoy, he was barely conscious. He was shaking all over, his hands shaken by violent spasms. His face was a mask of blood and tears, swollen and bruised.  
No jokes this time.  
When the guards let him and went away, he simply fell on the cell floor and he moved no more.  
It takes a lot more to break me, had said Malfoy after the other interrogation. Had they broken him now?  
“Malfoy? Malfoy?”  
He just curled up, gritting his teeth. Harry tried to help him up and touching his neck he realized his head was bleeding. Jesus Christ.  
“Malfoy, where does it hurt?”  
But he didn’t answer. Harry touched one of his trembling hands and realized they had broken three fingers and his tendon. The thought of the pain made him dizzy.  
“Malfoy, open your eyes.”  
He obeyed. His pupils were so dilated that the grey irises had almost disappeared. What they gave him besides Veritaserum?  
“Where does it hurt?”  
He didn’t seem to understand. He turned and tried to puke but he couldn’t. “Hurt,” he repeated with some difficulty, and then closed his eyes.  
Harry lifted up his shirt. Malfoy’s torso was bruised and between a Sectumsempra’s wound and another Harry saw something that shouldn’t be in sight, a white piece of bone. Had Robbard gone mad? Malfoy could fuckin' die! And if he died, all this bloody operation would be fucked up. In the meanwhile, Malfoy had started to sob in a strange way, like gasping for air.

“Malfoy, breathe,”  
He tried to obey. His breathes were noisy and strange and after a while he turned again and throwed up blood. Then he suddenly looked calm and almost happy.  
“Jay,” he slurred. “I’m d-dying.”  
“No,”  
“Yes,” Malfoy drooled blood and smiled like he was finally in peace. “I’m dying.”  
“You’re not going to die.”  
“Tell ev… everyone t-the Dark Lord is c-coming back.” Harry was tempted to hit him despite his conditions. “Tell t- them you’re one of… us. N-now…” begged Malfoy “…t-the pillow.”  
“The pillow?” Harry wasn’t certain he understood. Malfoy nodded. Harry took his pillow. Had Malfoy hidden something in it?  
“Kill me.”  
“No.”  
“Please… it- it hurts…” Malfoy tried to reach for him but his hand, with the broken tendon, didn’t obeyed.  
Harry stood there with the pillow. “Where is the Dark Lord?”  
Malfoy didn’t answer.  
“Malfoy, if you’re dying you must tell me where is the Dark Lord!”  
He didn’t answer, again. Harry panicked. Was he dead?  
He felt his pulse. No. He had just collapsed.  
But he wasn’t wrong. He was dying. There was a red pool of blood beneath him. His body was wincing and Malfoy smiled, almost unconscious. “Dad…” he whispered to the void. “I d-did ev-everything you wanted. Everything.”

Harry didn’t sleep. Malfoy spent the entire night bleeding and talking with his father’s ghost, or rather with a hallucination, as Lucius Malfoy’s soul had been fed to Dementors. Harry listened, but they were just fragments of words.  
“… Duty…” “…pure blood…” “… dad, take me away from here…” “…take me away…” “… I deserve it, I did my duty… let me die…”  
“Let me die” soon became the leitmotiv of the night. Harry was pretty sure Malfoy had a concussion.  
Let me die. Let me die. Let me die.  
“Malfoy?” Harry gently put the pillow under his head.  
“Let me die…” With the sane hand, Malfoy searched for Harry’s. “Mom…”  
“No, Malfoy, it’s me, it’s Harry.” Harry paled. Did he just screw up everything? “Jay. I was joking. I am Jay.”  
“Mom… dad… I want to die… let me die…” Malfoy was crying. He didn’t seem to have registered his words. “Please… let me die… I want to die…” He sobbed again, and Harry suddenly hugged him. It was too sad, too painful, Malfoy dying in his arms, begging his father’s ghost, the imminent return of Voldemort… let me die…  
“I deserve it!” Malfoy sobbed, and Harry cried too.

It was dawn when Malfoy came a bit to his senses.  
“Jay.”  
“I’m here.”  
“Jay, I k -know it’s hard but I’m d-dying,” Malfoy said again. “And it’s… it’s p-painful… you’re m-my friend, please, you j-just have to…” Malfoy gestured to the pillow.  
“I’ll do it,” said Harry “If you’ll tell me where the Dark Lord is. If you’ll not be here to protect me…” Harry said trying to look like Jay, a scared boy about to be left alone in Azkaban “…I must know where he is.”  
Draco laughed a chilling laugh. “The… Dark Lord?” He hesitated, then in a whisper, “… He’s dead and b-buried, Jay.”  
“What?”  
“Dead. That…” He coughed blood. “That asshole Potter took him out.”  
“But… even tonight… you said he was coming back. And your arm…”  
Malfoy shook his head. “You m-must say he’s c-coming back. Th- that you’re with him.” Malfoy tried to move his arm. “’v d-done it. Wh-with th... spoon.”  
Harry looked closer. The red line around that horrible Mark, from that distance, seemed just an infected scratch. But if it was true, why hadn’t the scratch healed?  
“Do you do that everyday?”  
Malfoy nodded.  
“Cox… will offer you drugs… do not accept it…” Malfoy closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness again.


	10. “I’m pretty sure” isn’t evidence

Harry’s heart was beating too fast. Of course, Malfoy’s reasons weren’t clear, and there was something missing, he couldn’t get what, but Harry was able to distingue truth and lie and he was pretty sure Malfoy wasn’t lying. He was dying, he had nothing to lose, and nothing to gain in confessing something like that to Jay Roxen.  
But why should Malfoy invent that the Dark Lord was coming back? What kind of foul play was that? Harry needed to see Robbard now, and he needed someone to heal Malfoy because he really was about to say goodbye to this world. He beat in vain on the cell’s bars, another hour passed before they took him to Robbard, and in that hour Draco got worse and worse.

As soon as Robbard closed the door, Harry burst out.

“Are you crazy? He’s dying!”  
“Are there new informations?”  
Reluctantly, Harry nodded. Robbard’s methods had got something from Malfoy, one way or another. “Yes. But I want him healed now.”  
“What?”  
“He’s fucking bleeding to death, Robbard.”  
“You’re very concerned for a Death Eater.”  
“Jesus! He’s a person!”  
“Tell me about the new informations.”  
“Not until I see Malfoy in the infirmary.”   
Robbard looked annoyed, but he nodded. Half an hour later Draco was in a clean bed in the Infirmary with two vials of Repleneshing-blood flooing into his arm and some Skele-gro in his stomach, and with a lot of spells - Vulnera Sanentur among them – re-building his body.  
“Now, Potter, I’d prefer we don’t lose other time,” Robbard said and Harry was disgusted by a such unsensitive consideration when Malfoy’s life was at stake.   
“What do we know about Lord Voldemort?”  
Harry took a deep breath. “That he is dead and buried. Malfoy lied to everyone about his return. I don’t know why.”  
“What?”  
Suddenly Harry remembered that morning in the showers. Malfoy barely standing on his feet, the two men that came close, that touched him, that stepped back when he talked about the Dark Lord… “I think it was a way to defend himself here in Azkaban.”  
“And that’s all? No real threat?”  
“Some real threats existed, for Draco.”  
“I’m asking if Voldemort actually threatened to come back!”  
“No. He didn’t. Malfoy put this thing up.”  
“If that’s true, why he didn’t confess that during interrogations?”  
“Maybe because the same people that bring him there spit in his bowl and beat him? I don’t know.”  
“And what about the letter?”  
The letter. Suddenly Harry understood what the missing piece was. Malfoy’s letter was, no doubt, incriminating.  
But Harry was certain Malfoy didn’t lie this time.  
“Dunno. Maybe he understoood that we were spying on him and tried to muddy the waters."  
Robbards rolled his eyes. Harry went on. “Well, better. Listen, our work here is done. We’ve got our answers. I want to go back to my family.” Harry thought that he should try to help Malfoy too. How? He could ask for a new trial. Recant his statement. He should talk with Hermione and understand what he could do for him. But there was something more urgent.  
“Robbard, look, you have to arrange for Malfoy to receive the counter-spell once a day.”  
Robbard was silent for a moment. “I’ll try. But listen, you cannot go back now, Harry.”  
“Why not?”  
“We cannot trust a Death Eater word and your speculations about it. I want you to talk with him again. Try to understand if your ‘muddy the waters’ theory about his letter is correct.”  
“And how do you think Jay Roxen should justify the fact he has read that letter?”  
“I don’t know. That’s your business. I want to be absolutely certain that what he said is true.”  
“Robbard, I’m tired of this shithole. Malfoy didn’t lied. I’m pretty sure.”  
“’I’m pretty sure’ isn’t evidence. Try one more time. After that, come what may, I’ll consider the mission accomplished.”

Harry sighed. “This time I won’t wait a week. How do I contact you if I’m done?”  
Robbard hesitated. “A password. You’ll say to the guards, they’ll call me.”  
“What password?”  
“Pick one yourself.”  
Harry thought of Dumbledore passwords. “Sherbet lemon,” he said.  
“And sherbet lemon will be.”


	11. End of  the  play

Malfoy was discharged from the infirmary in the evening. As Robbard methods were based on kicks and punches, Muggle wounds that didn’t stick on a wand, spells and potions had been effective in healing them. But when Harry tried to speak with him, Malfoy was still in a desperate, on-the-alert state of mind.

“How do you feel?” Harry asked. Malfoy stared at him.  
“As one who’s been tortured and betrayed.”  
“Betrayed?”  
Malfoy ignored him and climbed to his bunk. He was crying.  
“You gave me the bloody Despair Draught,” he said with a broken voice. “On legality borders,” he laughed, a bitter laugh.  
“Who gave it to you?”  
“End this fucking play. I don’t get why you’re still here.”  
“Wh- what play?”  
“Fuck you,” Malfoy said, and that was all Harry got for an entire hour. Malfoy passed that hour sobbing in his bed and cursing that ‘bloody draught’ they gave him.  
Then he calmed down, or the potion effect ended.  
“A cop,” he said, caustic. “Can’t believe it. A fucking cop.”  
“I’m not a cop.”  
“Spare me these bullshits.”  
Malfoy was so angry he was trembling and Harry didn’t insist. It would be just a waste of time to deny what was obvious. “How did you understand?”  
“How?” That bitter laugh again. “First, I’m still alive. Then, you made some mistakes.”  
“Oh, you’d prefer if I’d let you die?” Harry snapped back.  
Malfoy hesitated and Harry’s heart broke a bit.   
Finally he said: “Why the fuck are you still here?”  
“Your letter.”  
“What letter?”  
“A letter you sent to your mother. There were references to Voldemort.”  
Draco winced. “References?”

“You wrote: ‘I’ll do whatever I can for You-Know-Who. Bring my gratitude to You-Know-Who. I am grateful that You-Know-Who choose me.’ I presume it wasn’t Voldemort. So, who? Are you collecting followers? Voldemort’s sympathizers?”  
Malfoy winced again at Voldemort’s name. “That’s none of your business.”  
“Listen. Either you give me something that will convince my boss that Voldemort isn’t coming back, or I’ll be stuck in here with you.”  
“Why the hell should I care? And don’t say his bloody name.”  
“What name? Voldemort? Jesus Christ, Malfoy!”   
Malfoy laughed again.  
“What’s so funny?”  
“You just made your mistake again.”  
“What mistake?”  
“The mistake that made me suspect you weren’t who you said you were.”  
From the slot in the door the lunch trays were passed in the cell. Neither of them moved.  
“What mistake?”  
“No pureblood wizard says ‘Jesus Christ’,” Malfoy explained.   
Then he sat in a more comfortable position. “For what I care, you can stay here forever.”  
“Listen, I want to go back home. Explain your fucking letter and it will be the best for everyone.”  
“It will be the best for you. For me…” Malfoy’s gaze got lost in the void. “… Nothing will change.”  
Harry thought to Malfoy’s vision of life, do ut des.  
“I’ll get you out.”  
“Oh, that’s rich,” Malfoy laughed heartily, “You tell big lies, man. Of course, you can go to the Wizengamot and say: ‘you were wrong on the Death Eater, get him out’. Every fucking cop has this power. Please. I’m a bit offended, tell your department, that they sent to me their dumbest Auror. Fuck, even I deserved better.”  
“Malfoy, I really can get you out.” Harry hesitated. “I can try, at least. I can ask for your sentence to be shortened. But actually, I don’t think you belong here.”  
“Well, Minister and Wizengamot are waiting for you. I’m sure they’ll change the sentence once they’ve heard your fucking opinion.”  
But something has changed in his voice. Harry hit a nerve. He went on.  
“I guarantee. If you explain the letter, I guarantee they’ll listen to me.”  
“Listen, wanna go back home? Say I’ve written the letter because I was suspecting someone was spying on me. To convince them the Lord was coming back.”  
“But this isn’t the truth.”  
Malfoy was silent.  
“Who’s You-Know-Who?”  
“Fuck you.”  
“Malfoy, this isn’t working.” Harry tried to speak calmly. “You must tell me who is.”  
Malfoy stayed stubbornly silent.  
“I really can get you out.”  
“Right, of course.”  
Harry hesitated.  
“If you’d be sure I can get you out,” Harry said. “Would you tell me about the letter?”  
“And how the fuck a bloody cop can guarantee me I’ll get out? The entire Wizengamot voted for my conviction.” Malfoy raised his Dark Mark arm. “Harry Potter voted for my conviction!”  
In for a penny… in for a pound.  
Harry dropped the bomb.  
“I’m Harry Potter,” he said.  
This captured Draco’s attention.


	12. Sherbet Lemon

Sherbet lemon

“What?”

“It’s me, Malfoy. I am Harry Potter.”

How would Draco react? Harry added again, _captatio benevolentae_ : “I can get you out.”

Draco was staring at him wide-eyed. “Harry Potter,” he repeated. He stepped back as he could in his bunk till he found himself back to the wall.

“Yes. It’s me. I can get you out if you t…” He didn’t end the sentence, as Draco literally jumped on him and pushed him on the ground. Harry’s coccyx slammed against the floor but he couldn’t cry as Malfoy’s hands were strangling him. Was he going to kill him? Without air in the lungs, Harry gasped. Fresh out of the infirmary, Malfoy was strong, more than Harry expected.  
“M- malfoy…”

But probably he didn’t want to kill him, at least not that way, as he let him go just to punch him so hard in the face that Harry’s nose broke and start to spill blood everywhere. Harry did the switch leap and held him down on the floor with his knee.

“You’re a fucking psycho! Bloody Salazar! May you and your fucking descendants be damned forever!” Malfoy was trying to free himself.

“I can get you out.”

“After you put me in?” Draco snapped. He stopped resisting and just lied on the floor, motionless. “I _kissed_ you.” He suddenly laughed, a laugh like breaking glasses. Then, he stayed silent.

“Malfoy?”

“…”

“Who’s you-know-who?”

“Have you already told someone that the Dark Lord isn’t returning, haven’t you?”

“I told Robbard.”

“You told Robbard.” Malfoy laughed and Harry could feel the hysteria. “I’m dead.”

“What?”  
“It’s your friend Robbard that directs interrogation, are you aware of that? He’s a fucking sociopath.”

“He’s not my friend. And I don’t like his methods.”

“His methods? His methods concern bloody water boarding in a basin filled of Draught of Despair. His methods concern drugging you to your bloody pupils and put you in front of a Boggart when you’re so high you believe it real. All while the other guards beat the shit out of you.”  
Harry was silent for a moment. “I never liked Robbard. He’s just… he’s my boss. I didn’t agree with him… well… about everything. I said him a thousand times that his methods were too violent. I’m sorry, Malfoy.”

“You’re _sorry_.”

“I’ll get you out,”

“Do you think it was easy surviving in here? It took me years to persuade everyone of the Dark Lord’s return. Fuck, I cut my arm open everyday! Have you got a fuckin’ idea of what will happen when your non-friend Robbard will tell the guards the Dark Lord will not return?” For a moment there was authentic fear in Malfoy’s eyes. “I’ll die. And probably in a slow, painful way.”  
“Why should you die? You’re strong. You made it so far. I told you, I’ll get you out, if you just tell me wh…”

“Why should I die? Oh, let’s see. Maybe because Johnson will hit me a bit too hard? Or because Cox and his friends will make me pay in the showers for kidding with them about the Dark Lord? Or because my life will become such a hell that this time…” But he didn’t end the sentence. “Why don’t you just kill me now, Potter?”

“Are you done with this whining?”

“Whining?” Malfoy laughed again. He looked calm and amused, but Harry had learnt that when Malfoy started to find everything very funny, he could explode any time. “No. That’s it, Potter. You destroyed my only protection and you must do it. You cannot just throw me to the dogs alive.”

“Malfoy, stop being such a drama queen. I said I’ll get you out, you just have to tell m…”

“Drama queen,” giggled Malfoy. “I’d like to act, do you know? I’d be a great actor.”

“That’s for sure,” said Harry, thinking of how he fooled everyone. “But if you’d tell me who’s you-know-who…”

“I won’t tell you. Now kill me or fuck off and let that someone else take care of that.”

“Malfoy, try to be…” Harry was about to say reasonable. But Malfoy interrupted him.

“ _To be or not to be_ ,” he declaimed. “ _That is the question_.”

  
“Malfoy, Jesus Christ,” Harry swore and Malfoy almost smiled.

Harry ignored him. “Listen, I really want to get you out. Tell me who’s You-Know-Who.”

“Get me out and I will tell you.”

And Harry pondered. What did it change? Nothing. He really wanted to get Malfoy out, and he had enough power to do it in that very moment, so there was no real matter. He wanted to go home, and he didn’t like the idea of leaving Malfoy there at the others inmates’ mercy. Malfoy had some points, he had build up a system to survive, a plot deign of Salazar Slytherin, and Harry had arrived and destroyed it. If something would happen to Malfoy, Harry would feel responsible, and he already felt responsible for enough dramas and tragic deaths, thank you. Robbard would get his informations, he’d go home, Draco would go home too and everyone will live happily ever after.

“It isn’t impossible. Listen, I’ll propose to take you in special custody at my home till the trial will be re-opened. I’ll try to make it fast.” He was already calculating his speech: _as new elements came out during the investigation…_ “But Malfoy, you have to promise me you’ll tell me any little thing. It is necessary that Robbard gets his info and that nothing remains unclear about you if we want to be certain you get an absolution.”

Malfoy seemed shocked. “You actually want to get me out.”

“Yes. Of course. Now that I know you lied to Voldemort for me…”

Draco winced at Voldemort’s name, but he didn’t comment. Instead he said: “Why didn’t you ask me before the trial?”

Harry was silent for a moment. “I can’t change the past.” Those were Malfoy’s words.

“Eleven years of my fucking life.”

Harry hesitated. “Would you tell me the truth, if I’d get you out?”

Draco pondered. Then, he nodded.

“All right. Guard!” Harry called for Johnson beating the cell door.

Johnson came close.

“What do you want?”

“Sherbet lemon.”

“Are you kidding me, inmate?”

Harry stared at him. “Sherbet lemon!” He said, winking.

Johnson hit him with his baton. Harry cried and fell to the ground with a broken tooth. The door closed behind the guard.

“Impressive,” Draco said.


	13. The flower of the impossible way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where everything's discovered

“Good morning love,” said Ginny to Harry.

“Morning,” he answered. He was already getting ready to go to work.

“You’re going early, today.” Ginny kissed him.

“Yes, I must step by the Minister.”

“Won’t you kiss your children?” Ginny stared at him. He was already on the doorstep.

“Of course. Who want to give a kiss to dad?”

  
  


“I’d appreciate an explanation.”

But Harry couldn’t explain what happened, not even to himself. The broken tooth was too painful. He couldn’t think.

“It was the password. To see Robbard.”

Draco stayed silent.

After some minutes, he came closer. “How do you keep Jay’s appearance?”

“A special version of Polyjuice.”

“How do you take it?”

Harry gestured to the glass on his tray. Draco took it and smelled it. Then, cautiously, he tasted it.  
  
“Potter, this is water with lemon,” he said.

“What? You’re wrong.”

Draco said nothing. He stood there, silent, thoughtfully, and Harry felt something like terror.

Then, Draco asked, serious: “Potter, Robbard, or someone else.. did a spell on you?”

“No… he didn’t d…” Harry tried to remember.

_He had drunk polyjuice. The normal one, with his awful taste._

_“We’ve got a better version.” Robbard was saying. “Colorless, so it will seem water and Malfoy will not suspect. Odorless. Even the taste is better. It lasts 24 hours, so it will be enough for you to take it once a day.”_

_Robbard observed as Harry turned into Jay Roxen. “Let’s fix your dresses.” He waved his wand. “Manat mutazio.”_

“Yes. He fixed my dresses.”

“Do you remember the words?”

“With an M. Manat mutazio?”  
“ _Maneat mutatio_ ,” interpreted Draco.

Harry waited.  
“It’s a spell that makes your appearance permanent,” Draco explained. “Until who casted it will cast a Finite.”

“What?”

“Or until you find some Viaim Flower extract.”

“Viaim Flower?”

“Flower of the impossible way. It grows only on an ancient mountain in Perù. Not easy to find in Azkaban.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

  
Harry stopped to look at Malfoy, wondering if the ex Death Eater was actually mentally sane. He had passed in half an hour from crying to bursting out in rage, then to being hysterically happy, then to a quiet disperation, to complete the cycle with the flower of the impossible way. Maybe Azkaban did a number on him, in the end.  
  
“Malfoy…”

“Yes,” Malfoy sounded annoyed, as Harry had interrupted his thoughts.

“Why are you so quiet?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Ten minutes ago you were out of your mind.”

“There’s a time for emotions and a time for considering facts and probabilities, Potter.”

Draco started to walk up and down the small cell, reminding Harry of something familiar. “We don’t need panic right now.”

“What panic? There must be an explanation. It must be a misunderstanding.”  
  


Malfoy stared at him like he was an idiot, and Harry suddenly knew who he was reminded of. His father. Lucius Malfoy. It was liken seeing him again, when Draco spoke in a calm and cold tone, with a bit of despise, like a Roman emperor deciding the alignments of a war.  
  
“How _you_ with your incredibly small brain could manage to beat the Dark Lord will remain forever a mistery. Misunderstanding? There’s no misunderstanding here. You said you and Robbard didn’t agree on anything. Think, Potter. How many people know that you’re here?”

“Ginny knows I’m on a mission, but she doesn’t know…” _where_ , Harry thought. “Nobody knows where I am.”

“Just Robbard, I got?”

“It was for safety.” _We must be very careful about your safety, Harry. You sent there the majority of the inmates. So no one must know your true identity, not even the guards._

“Yeh, safety, of course,” Draco sneered. “So you’re here to accomplish an almost useless mission, and nobody knows where you are. And you’re here on request of your boss, that, besides being a violent psycho, doesn’t agree with you on a single thing.”

Harry stayed silent. The pain of his tooth was unbearable and Malfoy was driving him crazy with his conspiracy theories.

_“_ They framed you, Potter. Robbard made you disappear.”

“Are you mad? That makes no sense at all. To what end? And anyway, how can he ‘make me disappear’? Ginny would notice. My children… Ron, Hermione… the entire magic world would notice!”

“He could say you’re heroically dead accomplishing the mission. Or missing.” Malfoy’s eyes lit up. “Or maybe you didn’t disappear. Maybe for them you never went away.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“To what end, you asked? This. This was his end. Harry Potter, the most powerful man in the magic world. Beloved by all the people. Respected in the high places. A hair you lost would be enough. Or if you drunk from a glass. A bit of DNA, anything…”

_“It is a delicate issue. Take a drink.”_

And Harry started to understand. “Polyjuice. Plus the spell.”

“Exactly. And now he can makes you say anything he wants you to say.”

  
  
*

Ginny was entering in the living room.

“Daddy, Albus broke my doll!”

Lily’s voice was loud like an ambulance. Harry burst out.

“Shut up!” He took her for an arm and slapped her in the face. Ginny’s heart missed a beat. “Dad doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working, got it?”

Lily was frightened and started to cry.

Ginny came in with her wand out. “Are you mad?”

“What’s up, honey?”

“You just hit our daughter.”

Strange emotions passed on Harry’s face. Finally he said: “I’m sorry. It’s a bad period.”

Ginny seemed to ponder about it. “Harry. I know you’ve had a difficult childhood. I love you, and if you feel like, we can call the Mind Healer again. But you cannot raise a finger on my children again. Never again. Am I clear?”

Harry stared at her and for a moment she didn’t recognize him. Then he looked at her with a sweet expression. “It won’t happen again. Never.” He promised.

And Ginny believed him.  


  
  
  
  
---


	14. Azkaban's  lullaby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! As you know English is not my mother tongue... in this chapter that will be even more evident because I tried to translate some rhymes. So... have mercy on that as I'm sure it won't be effective as it is in Italian but I've tried.  
> Thanks for reading.

“It can’t be.” Harry said. “It’s crazy.” And he waited in vain a week to demonstrate to Draco that his conspiracy theories were just no-sense. Robbard never showed up and every single time he tried to talk to the guards, they beat him. He arrived to the point of crying desperately: “I’m Harry Potter! Fuck, I’m Harry Potter! Listen to me! Sherbet Lemon! I’m Harry Potter! Sherbet Lemon!”  
At that point Draco, who was in Sectumsempra’s cycle worse phase - the one in which he lied all day on the bunk bleeding and doing nothing at all – spoke in a whisper.  
“Leave it, Potter. It won’t be good for anyone if they transfer you to the psychiatric ward.”  
“Guards are more violent,” commented Harry.  
“Yes. Now they know Dark Lord will not return.” Malfoy tried to move and hissed for the pain. “Soon also the inmates will know.”  
“What will happen?”  
“We’ll die. Or beg them to kill us.” Malfoy tried again to move and desisted.  
“Optimist.”  
“Fuck off, Potter.”

Harry understood that Draco was thirsty, but couldn’t move from his bed. As he had already did once, he offered him a glass of water and helped him to drink.  
That day Draco was too weak to speak again. Harry felt desperate.

Luckily, the hemorrhage’s peak was always followed, on the day after, by the counter-spell. Draco came back as a new man and when they freed him of cuffs and mask he sat besides Harry looking a great warlord ready to defeat an army.  
“Well, time to make a plan.” He said.  
Harry almost smiled at the sudden mood rush. ”Yesterday you were persuaded we’d die.”  
“Having blood in my veins tend to improve my mood. Now shut up and obey.”  
“Who decided you’re in charge?”  
“The eleven years I spent in here because of you.”  
“Do you want to be in charge on the basis of my guilt?”  
“Do you want a punch to decide who’s in charge?”  
“Maybe?” Harry smiled. To plot with your archi-enemy, if it wasn’t messed up! But if Malfoy had not been there, Harry would have gone crazy. Every time Harry tried to complain, Malfoy glared at him, and given their past, Harry wasn’t really in the position to say a word.  
“The eleven years I spent in here give me a better knowledge of the prison’s internal dynamics,” Malfoy explained as he was talking to a dumb child, “and for that I’ll be the one in charge.”  
Harry had no further objection. It was a Auror-like argument, a trained soldier-argument, as that shit Robbard had defined Malfoy.  
“Let’s take stock of the situation. We cannot communicate with anyone outside, except for the letters you can send to your mother.”  
“Which will be strictly controlled and if Robbard or some friend of him will find something strange, guess who’s gonna fatally slip in the showers the day after?”  
“Me or you?”  
“Both, you idiot.”  
“Okay, so we cannot communicate with anyone outside, your mother cannot help and if your theory about Robbard stealing my appearance is correct, neither Ginny nor my friends know I’ve disappeared.”  
“And it’s just a matter of time before the other inmates will know from the guards that I lied about the Dark Lord and beat the shit out of us.”  
“Not to be impolite, but why would they attack me too?”  
Draco frowned. “Because Jay Roxen is young and fuckable. Congratulations on your pondered choice of disguise.”  
Harry said nothing. There were abysses of silence about Draco’s first years in Azkaban and he was starting to understand why.

“Neither your mother, nor Ginny, nor my friends… not even Voldemort’s shadow… we have no one.”  
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong.” Malfoy said. “We have Cox.”  
Harry blinked. Maybe he didn’t understand well. “Cox?”  
“Cox. Azkaban’s king.”  
“Azkaban’s king?”  
“Are you under a Repeat-Spell?”  
“A Repea…” Harry stopped before repeating even that.  
“Cox handles everything. Every kind of illegal transaction in this bloody shithole. Including… dealing.”  
“Do you want to deal?”  
“The flower, you moron. The Viaim extract. Cox may be able to get us the flower.”  
Harry started to understand. “To get back my true appearance.”  
“Exactly.”  
“And when I’ll be myself?”  
“They’ll let you out, you idiot.”  
“And if they don’t?”  
“Certain death.”  
Harry gulped. “So why bother to try?”  
“Because one chance is better than no chance at all.”  
Harry realized in that moment that Malfoy’s plan wasn’t a plan to evade. It was a plan that would get only him, Harry, out of that hell.  
“Do you trust me?” He asked.  
Malfoy stared at him. “One chance is better than no chance at all.” He repeated.

“And how we’ll persuade Cox?”  
“It depends. If the guards haven’t already spread rumors, I may be able to persuade him to act upon Dark Lord’s instruction.”  
“And… and if they know the truth?”  
Malfoy hesitated for the first time. “If they know, Cox will want something in return.”   
“What will he want?”  
“He’ll tell us,” Malfoy answered, but Harry felt he was omitting something.  
“We don’t have anything to give him in return.”  
Malfoy pursed his lips. Then, he spoke, looking very serious. “Potter, if Cox has the goddamned flower, I’ll… I’ll take care…” he hesitated again… “…of the payment. But if once you’re out you’ll leave me here to die…” Draco was speechless for a moment and Harry realized that he had nothing, he could not threaten him. If Harry would let him die, Draco wouldn’t be able to do a single damned thing.  
“If you’ll leave me here, I’ll kill myself and I’ll come back as a ghost and I’ll fucking torment you until you’ll lose your head and you’ll kill yourself too.”  
“What a lovely image.” Harry commented. “Listen, Malfoy, I can’t swear an Unbreakable Vow without a wand. But if you’ll get me out, I’ll get you out. My word. It will be the first thing. Actually, I won’t get out of here without you.” Harry held out his hand. Malfoy stared at it and then shook it.  
“And if you tell me how you’re going to pay Cox, I’ll help you. If it’s something I can do, I’ll do it myself.” 

Malfoy looked at him sadly. Then shook his head. “No. I’m already…” he was speechless again “…broken.”   
“What does it mean?”  
Draco touched his torso. “My soul is already corrupted,” he whispered.  
“What the hell are you talking about?”  
“Shut the fuck up, Potter, before I change my mind,” snapped Draco, and Harry shut up.

It was very late at night when Harry, tormented by the abysses about his first years in Azkaban, about Cox’s payment, asked a question.

“Malfoy, how did you do that?”  
“How did I do what?”  
“How did you survive eleven years in here?”  
Malfoy hesitated for a long time.  
“I didn’t,” he said eventually, and Harry for a moment feared he had talked with a ghost all the time.  
“What do you mean?” He asked, shivering.  
“There’s a little song.” Malfoy said in the dark. “A little song about me. Wanna hear that?”  
And he started to hum.  
“ _Listen to me man,_  
_In Azkaban_  
_We’re like the cat with the mouse,_  
_With the scion of the noble house._  
_The boy hung himself with the sheets_  
_And he refused to eat_  
_Then he started a fight_  
_And h_ _e slit his wrists in the middle of night.._  
_Where he thinks he’ll go?_  
_What he thinks he’ll get?_  
_Scion of the noble house_  
_Here you’re like the mouse with the cat._ ”

Harry stayed silent.  
“Like it? As I discovered, it isn’t so easy to commit suicide in jail. They said…” Malfoy spoke often that way, with too many sudden pauses, silences that Harry feared to fill. _They_ who? “They said I wouldn’t take the easy way out. Then they made the song. Catchy, isn’t it?”  
Harry said nothing. There was silence for a while.  
“Azkaban’s lullaby,” said Draco eventually. “Sweet dreams, Potter.”


	15. Seven hearts

Hermione looked at Ron. “There’s something strange about Harry.”

“Why?”

“Have you heard about his speech at the Minister?”

Ron made his I-know-I-should-read-the- _Daily-Prophet_ -but-I-prefer- _Quidditch-Today_ look.

Hermione handed him the magazine.

Ron read. “ _…and until Evil will be extirpated from the Magical World, there won’t be a true peace_ …”

“What is strange? It is always been like that. Harry versus evil.”

“Ron, he’s trying to establish proscription’s lists. He asked the Kiss for two thirds of the Azkaban’s prisoners, and correctional measures for everyone that shows an attitude towards the Dark Arts. He want to test children! And look here! _It is necessary for the Auror Department and the guards in Azkaban to be able to use Inforgivables when needed! Whoever has the Dark Mark or symphatizes with former Death Eater must be Kissed.”_

“Mione, there aren’t Dementors anymore. Harry’s probably thinking that Azkaban isn’t sure enough.”

“Ron, whoever had the Dark Mark has _already_ been Kissed. Except for Narcissa Malfoy, who’s been acquitted, and Draco… whoo was sixteen when… he did what he did.”

“We were sixteen too.”

“That has nothing to do with it. Malfoy’s already paying. Twenty four years in Azkaban are more than enough. In my opinion, it was a tough judgment. But that’s not the point. The point is, _it’s not like Harry_.”

And Ron said nothing. They could question about what Malfoy deserved or not deserved, but that was true: Harry would never ask the Minister for Malfoy to be Kissed.  
  


*

“Cox,” whispered Draco, leaning against the shower’s wall.

“Princess.”

“I need to talk to you.”

Cox came closer.

“I need some extract of the Viaim’s flower. Do you think you can get some? The Dark Lord will reward you.”  
  
“The Dark Lord? Interesting, because I heard some rumors. It seems that all this Dark Lord story is just some bullshit you made up.” Cox said, grabbing Malfoy’s arm.

Draco laughed. “And who says that?”

“My little birds sing, princess, as you know well.”

“Your little birds are wrong.”

“Maybe. But I won’t lend anything to the Dark Lord if I’m not sure he’s gonna repay me.” Cox squeezed harder Malfoy’s already battered arm.

“Cox,” yelped Draco, and Harry saw the mistake. The name had escaped his lips in a too desperate way and Cox, who had the predator’s instinct, had sensed it.

“If th _e Dark Lord_ needs the flower, I fear you’ll have to settle up in advance.”

“How much time for getting it?”

“One, two weeks at most. But let’s talk about my fee. It’s a rare extract. It’s gonna be expensive. How do you prefer to pay?”

“The usual way,” whispered Malfoy.

“I’ll arrange it.” Cox left his arm.

Malfoy stopped him. “On Monday,” he said. “If… if it’s possible.”

Cox just nodded and went away.

Harry looked at Malfoy, but he had turned to the wall and opened the shower. The blood of his wounds mingled with water in the gutter.  
  


“Malfoy.” They were in cell. Malfoy had slowly climbed to his bunk and helied there. “What did Cox mean?”

“Shut up.”

“What’s the usual way?”

Silence. “Potter, I don’t wanna speak about it. Change subject, okay?”

Harry hesitated. It wasn’t okay at all.

“Do you wanna… would you read for me… I’d like to know how it ends but… it’s Friday…” he added, as to justify himself.

Friday wasn’t a good day for Draco. His wounds were very opened and his sight and concentration worsened a lot. Harry pick up the book Draco was reading. There was a bookmark.

“Comus was arriving on his horse,” Malfoy whispered.

“… _Comus arrived on his horse, wearing his shining armour. Lady Yacinta’s heart missed a beat. She was prisoner in the tower. “My sweetheart!” Said Comus seeing her. “I’m here to free you from the Dragon…_ what’s it, Malfoy, a magical romance novel?”

“It’s a love story. Go on.”

“ _On my heart I swear I love you, and I’ll always love you! Comus bowed to his lady and she smiled. Comus! She cried. I love you too. And she touched her tormented heart_. Malfoy, there’s four times the word heart in four lines.”

“Yes… four hearts,” giggled Malfoy… “… for four lines.”

“Do you like this stuff?”

“I love it. Go on.”

_“The dragon was hidden in the heart of the castle, and his beating heart was what Comus’s heart longed for_… Oh, come on! It can’t be!”  
“Seven hearts,” Draco smiled.

“For seven brothers,” joked Harry.

“What?”

“It’s a Muggle movie. Seven brides for seven brothers.”

“Would you tell me it?”

Harry hesitated again. He knew Malfoy was trying to distract him from Cox’s question. He also knew he was in a lot of pain, on Friday. He was pale as a ghost and he continuously bit his lips to avoid moaning. And he knew that Malfoy put his hatred away to help him get out of that nightmare.

“Once upon a time in Oregon,” he began “….where seven brothers lived…”  
  
  
  
  
---


	16. Princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! I'm back :)

And Monday arrived. After the shower, with the complicity of the guard on duty, Draco disappeared in a little room with Cox and three other men.

Harry was taken to their cell by Johnson and had to hold himself not to scream.

Two hours later, the cell door opened. Even though it was Monday, Draco looked like shit. Harry felt ill thinking about what happened in that room.

Draco staggered to the bed. “We’ll have the flower in a few days,” he said.

“Malfoy…”

“Shh.” Malfoy looked at the little stair to the upper bunk as it was the Himalaya.

“Take my bed,” said Harry gently. But Draco didn’t seem to have heard. He sat on the floor, besides the wall, and stared into the void.

“Draco…”

“I’m not well,” Draco whispered. “I need some time alone, Potter.”

“And how… how can I do?” Harry could not leave the cell in any way.

“Just…” Draco hesitated. “Just, act like I’m not here.”

Harry stayed silent. Malfoy sat with the head between his knees.

Harry tried not to look at Malfoy shivering, still as he could, on the floor.

Some time passed. Eventually, Malfoy calmed down. He labouriosly climbed up to his bunk and slept for hours. Harry spent those hours reading the sappy adventures of Comus and Lady Yacinta, remembering Cox calling Malfoy ‘Princess’, and tormenting himself about what Malfoy did for him.

At dinner time, Malfoy was better. Harry passed him the tray and he slowly ate.

“Malfoy, what happened today?”

“I payed.”

“Yes, but how…”

“Shut up.”

Harry could hear the sound of the spoon on the bowl.

“Malfoy, I wish you didn’t… how did you pay him?”

No answer.

“Did you… Jesus Christ, Malfoy… you shouldn’t do that… not for me… I never wanted you to…”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“What?”

“You said that you’d get me out too,” There was urgency, now, in Malfoy’s voice.

“Of course, and I’ll do that, but…”

“Fine. The matter is closed.”  
  
  
When the lights went out, and both were awake, restless in their beds, Harry found the courage to ask again.

“It isn’t the first time, right?”

Predictably, Malfoy didn’t answer.

“It happened other times,” deduced Harry. “With the guards’ complicity.”

Malfoy stayed silent again, and Harry continued to talk as he was working on the report of an investigation.  
“And you tried to kill yourself. And they didn’t let you. You’ve been in the same cell owith two of them, isn’t it true? I read it in the files.”

Not a breathe from Malfoy.

“You wanted to die. And then you made up all the Voldemort story.”

He didn’t even winced at that name.

“But there’s something bothering me, Malfoy. You switched from committing suicide to do everything you could to survive. What happened? Why did you change your mind? Why to create such an elaborate plan to stay alive, after you tried four times to kill yourself?”

Harry knew it was a tactless question, but the Auror in him sensed something. Of course, it was also possible that Malfoy at some point had just decided to live. And of course, he probably would not answer.  
Instead… “You-know-who,” whispered Draco in the dark. His voice was thin, naked.

But Harry didn’t know who.

“Who’s You-know-who, Malfoy?”

But he spoke no more. Harry listened, but nothing. Malfoy was sleeping. Harry was now alone in his bunk. His mind tormented him with terrible images of what could have happened in that room today, of what happened to Draco in those eleven years, alone at the mercy of the Azkaban’s inmates and guards. That night, it was the great Harry Potter that cried alone in a prison cell, full of fear and anguish and guilt for his enemy’s fate.  
  



	17. Ghosts are free

“Prisoner 171,” a guard’s voice woke them up. “Prisoner 171.”

Draco suddenly opened his eyes. Johnson and the other guards never used that number to call him. They called him “shitbag” or “faggot” or “scum”, not “prisoner 171”.

“What happens?”

Johnson handed him some papers. “You’ve been condemned to the Kiss,” he said. “This Friday.”

Harry stood up. “What? Who condemned him?”

“Harry Potter,” read Malfoy from the letter.

Johnson left. Draco stayed there, with the papers in his hands.

“What’s on that letter?”

“It seems that _Harry Potter_ requested the Kiss for every Death Eater and whoever sympathize with them. That means, you and me.” Malfoy put the letter away. “My theory was correct. Robbard wants to get rid of you, but the Wizengamot decided for a different solution, for now. Death Eaters’ sentences will be revised, sympathizers’ sentences won’t. There will be…” Draco read “… a open and shut, well, a farce to justify this bullshit, and if I’ll be judged guilty, I’ll be Kissed on Friday afternoon.” Draco could not sneer. “I hope they won’t persecute my mother too.”

“I’ll kill him,” Harry declared. “Robbard is a dead man.”

Draco sat on the floor. “Potter, we have to talk. If we don’t have the flower before Friday, there’s a high chance I’ll be Kissed.”

“That won’t happen! We’ll find a way, Malfoy, I promise that…”

“Don’t make promises you cannot keep,” Malfoy spoke in a serious, low tone. “That’s the situation. Even if the guards aren’t in collusion with Robbard, if the flower arrives, I don’t know, on Saturday, I’ll be Kissed.” It looked as Malfoy was one hundred years old. It looked as it was fine for him to die, as if he had lived anything there is to live.

“Potter, do you remember I said to you that, once out of here, I’d tell you who’s You-Know-Who?”

Harry nodded.

“I’m going to tell you a secret now,” Malfoy whispered. “You must not tell anyone, until you’ll be out of here. Swear it.”

“I… I swear.”

“Potter, I…” Draco hesitated. “I’ve got a son and a wife.”

“What?”

“I’ve got a son and a wife.” Draco said again. “If I die, please, you have to promise me that… if you’ll get out, you’ll help my family. It won’t be easy for them. It isn’t already.”

“Your family,” Repeated Harry, shocked.

Draco nodded.

“You said you were the last Malfoy.”

Draco sneered and for a moment he looked like the boy he had been. “I lied, Potter. Slytherin, remember?”

  
“How is that even possible? How old is he? Did you have him before the trial?”

“He’s two years old.”

“What!? How?”

“My mother has been very…” Draco searched for the right word “…persevering. She didn’t want our bloodline to end with me. Black and Malfoy are two households of which only an heir remains, Potter. Me. And professor Lupin’s son, but… my aunt has been disowned, so… actually, only me. My mother managed to find a family willing to give one daughter as a bride, in exchange of the Manor and anything was left of my father’s fortune. She’s been clever. She put the condition she would remain in the Manor to help the daughter in law. The bride’s family accepted. Her name is Astoria. Astoria Greengrass.”  
  
Harry suddenly remembered Malfoy’s letter.

_Say them at soon as I’m out I will do my duty. Thank them for what they did, but especially bring my gratitude to You-Know-Who. At soon as you can, tell them that I’ll make out of here alive, and I will do everything’s asked from me, and I am grateful that You-Know-Who choose me._

_Toujours pur_

It was his wife. Malfoy had a wife.

_It was hard but we made it. Second decade of november, for the stars to be propitious. Toujours pur._  
  
_“_ How did you conceive the baby?”

“My mother corrupted Johnson with the few things she hadn’t sold, my father’s ring, his stick, and some cufflinks that belonged to my grand-grand-father. In exchange, Johnson consented a non-official coniugal visit. For non-maximum risk inmates it is regular but not for me, as I’m considered high-risk being a former Death Eater. We corrupted him so he would make… an exception.” Malfoy’s eyes looked so sad, almost dead.

Harry was shocked. He had so many questions he didn’t know how to start.

  
“Why are you keeping it secret?”

“Because it’s dangerous. It makes me… I can be blackmailed. If some people here would know I _do_ have something to lose outside, they could threaten my family. They could hurt Astoria, or Scorpius, or my mother.”

Scorpius. Such a strange name, as his own. Harry didn’t comment.

“That’s the reason you never wrote to your wife?”

Malfoy hesitated. “No. Not exactly. Astoria never wanted to see me or speak to me. I get news about her from my mom.”

“What!? Why?”  
  
Some moments passed. Then Draco spoke fast, eyes on the floor. “She’s very young. And as usual in pureblood families, she kept herself pure for the wedding. She had probably waited that day for her entire life. And the wedding consisted in two signatures on a contract. And in that visit….” There was a pain in Malfoy’s voice Harry had never heard. “…she had never seen me before. She must have felt as she had been sold in exchange of the castle… well, that’s what happened. They put on me that damned mask. And the handcuffs. It was Thursday. And Johnson stayed there to check on us **.** She cried all the time.” Draco swallowed. “Think about it, Potter. It is your first time and it is in prison. You’ve been forced to marry a criminal. A chained Death Eater, smelling of rotten blood, and there’s an asshole watching it all with a baton in his hand.” Draco’s voice broke. “They gave me a potion to make it… work. I couldn’t do without.” He waited for a moment, then he spoke again. “I don’t blame her for not… wanting to know me better.”

  
“But surely it has been terrible for you too,” Harry whispered.

“It isn’t the same. I am male. And older. And my life was already…” Draco hesitated, as always when he was talking about himself “… fucked up.” He looked down. “For my household this heir means everything. I’d have no other chances. She’s young. She dreamed for his Prince Charming. Or anyway for a different wedding. Pureblood weddings usually are parties that can last even weeks. Pureblood girls wait that moment for all their lives. If she didn’t marry me… she could have other chances.”  
  
“But you’re her son’s father.”

Draco didn’t answer this time. Harry was pervaded by a terrible doubt.

“Malfoy, did you… have you ever seen your son?”

Draco shook his head. Something inside Harry broke.  
  


“Mom writes me about him, but we try to do it so… so whoever reads cannot understand the subject. I encouraged her to write You-Know-Who, so my plan… would be more credible.” Malfoy shut his eyes for a moment. “So, that’s the reason you were searching for. I wanted to survive to know my son. I hoped I’d be able to make Astoria change her mind, to persuade her to come visit me with the baby. Or I hoped to get out of here in thirteen years and meet him. Or I don’t know what the fuck I hoped,” he snapped. Then he managed to calm himself. “Potter, if you’ll get out of here, and I’m sure you will, I’d like you to help my family regain a place in society. My mother has the Mark, as you know. And the lives of a Death Eater’s son and wife could be… less difficult… if they will be under Harry Potter’s protection.”

Harry Potter’s protection. He said it as one would say “a mafioso’s protection”, as he would say “the Dark Lord’s protection.” In Draco Malfoy’s world, there wasn’t really any difference between good and evil.

“And I’d like you to tell them I helped you. Scorpius may tell people his dad saved Harry Potter before he was Kissed. It would help him, when he’ll be older.”

“You’ll not be Kissed, Malfoy. I’ll tear this place apart.”

“It’s all on Cox,” he answered. “If he gets the flower in time.”

  
Malfoy looked so sad. He didn’t looked at Harry once, he had talked looking down on the floor, flushing. Harry thought of a boy and a girl, pawns in their families’ hands, forced to that humiliating visit in front of a guard… he thought of the beatings Malfoy had taken for years, he thought of his force, he thought of Malfoy playing Quidditch four thousands year ago, when they were young and all that counted was taking the damn golden snitch…. “ _Scared, Potter?”_  
  
Harry Potter kissed Draco Malfoy.

Draco looked at him. Harry kissed him again.

“You will not be Kissed.” Said Harry again. “Got it? You will not be Kissed.”

Draco laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because you’re kissing me, idiot.”

Harry flushed. He couldn’t explain the kiss not even to himself, let alone to Malfoy. Draco graciously didn’t comment further.

“No, I won’t be Kissed. You’re right.” He said.

“Because we’ll walk out of here alive, Draco.”

He shook his head. “Because if Cox has not the flower, you’ll kill me, Potter, before they fed me to the Dementors.” He gestured to the pillow.

“I won’t. Even if we’ll not get the flower, there’s still the chance of a fair sentence at the trial.”

Draco laughed. “Potter, that’s not a trial. That’s bullshit made just to keep up the appearances. Damned Circe, I’m not asking you so much.”  


_Just to kill you._ Harry’s heart was beating very fast. _Just to end your life._

“Hermione and Ron are members of the Wizengamot. You could talk with them, at the trial, and…”

“Do you honestly believe they’ll let me talk? Listen, Potter.” Draco sighed. “Do you remember what I said when we made the deal? That I’d come back as a ghost.”

“To torment me until I got crazy.”

“Yes, besides that. Potter, if I die I won’t pass behind the veil. I’ll stay there for a bit, as a ghost.”

“Malfoy, stop it. I won’t kill you.”

“I could see my son. My mom. Maybe I could know my wife. I could fly. See all the places I’ve never seen. Ghosts are free. Nobody can chain a ghost.”

“You’re not going to die. We’ll walk out of here alive, you said that, remember?”

“My father’s soul has been fed to Dementors,” Draco whispered. “Doesn’t exist anymore.”

“We don’t know that, Malfoy.”

“We made a deal during the war. If he’d die, he’d stay a bit as a ghost. Every time the Dark Lord pointed his wand at him, we weren’t forced to think that that was the last time we saw him. I knew my father would stay as a ghost. He would look after me.”  
  
  
  
Harry didn’t dare argue on Lucius Malfoy. Draco’s wound looked still open. He just stayed silent.

“I’ll never see him again, not even when I’ll be dead. He doesn’t exist anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Draco.”

“I don’t want to not exist.” Draco said eventually. “I want to be a ghost. See the world. Go to the sea. I don’t wanna smell this, ever again. I don’t wanna feel any pain again. I just wanna see my son and my mom. And it would be useful for you, too.”

“Useful for me? What are you talking about?”

“First thing I’d do as a ghost? I’d fly straight to the Weasel or the Mudblood and tell them you’re here. You’d be save and I would finally get out of this fucking place.”

Harry said nothing. It was logical, logical and completely wrong.

“If we don’t get the flower before Friday, you have to kill me, Potter. And this time, you have to do it for real.”  
  
  
  
  
---


	18. Do you wanna know how love feels?

Harry Potter didn’t know what was happening to him. Or, better… he knew he had been framed, and that Draco Malfoy had done something unspeakable to help him, and that he was risking his soul and his life.

What he didn’t know was how to handle this new world in which good weren’t good and evil weren’t evil, a world in which the chief of the Auror Department wanted him dead and a Death Eater tried to save him. Harry was full of contradictory feelings, he was worried for Ginny, for the children, for Draco, for himself, he missed his wife but he wanted to kiss Draco Malfoy again, God knows why. He wanted to destroy Azkaban prison and save Draco and kill Robbard and instead he was there, with Damocle’s sword on his head: if Cox would not get the flower in time, Draco had made him promise he would kill him.

Thursday arrived too fast. In the showers, Draco called Cox.

“Cox, I need the flower.” He hesitated. “I need it now,” he added.

Cox hit him. He slapped him on his face.

Harry wasn’t expecting it, and he winced.  


“Do you think you can speak to me like that? Where do you think you are? In your Manor, with your house elves? Do you think you can order me around?”

Draco looked surprised. He looked down. “No, sir.”

_No, sir?_

“What are you?”

Draco flushed. He closed his eyes, avoiding Harry’s gaze. He hesitated too much, because Cox pushed him against the wall.

“I asked you what the fuck you are!”

“A whore,” Draco whispered.

“Exactly. That’s what you are. A dirty whore.” Cox said. “You’d better not forget.”

Harry could not stand it. He pushed Cox and hit him hard. “How did you _dare_?”

“Stop, Pot… Jay!...” He got some confused cries from Draco. But he had already broken Cox’s nose. In a few moments, some men arrived and started to beat Harry. Cox cleaned the blood from his nose as Harry was beaten to a pulp and Draco screamed, trying ineffectively to do something.

“This piece of shit thinks we’re in one of your faggot novel. Look how he tried to defend your virtue.” Cox giggled. “So romantic,” he said as Harry was bleeding on the floor. “Maybe he could use some lessons in manners too.”  
Draco shook his head. “No, Cox. Let him be.”

“He’s cute enough, despite those teeth. But we’re gonna break them, so… guys, who wants a turn with the cute piece of shit?”

“Cox, don’t.” Cried Draco. “Let him be. I’ll do it.”

“Oh, don’t be afraid, your turn will come too.” Cox hissed. “Now shut up.”

Harry closed his eyes. In that moment, he heard Johnson’s voice. “What’s up?”

The inmates slipped away. Cox stared at Johnson, challenging him. Johnson left. Draco went close to Cox.

“The… the flower?” He forced himself to ask. “Do you know when it’ll arrive?” Draco swallowed. “Please?”

From the floor, with his ribs all shattered, Harry Potter watched Cox showing Draco a vial. “This flower, you mean?”

Draco nodded frantically. Here, they got it! Harry thought. Cox had the flower, thanks God…

Cox poured the extract in the vial in the gutter. “Here’s your flower, princess.”

Draco stood motionless, petrified, staring at the shower floor.

“My birds sang clearly, whore.” Cox smiled. “You’ve been kidding with us. Now we’re back to the good old times.” He sneered. “You’re already on the list. And he’s too,” he gestured to Harry. Then, he left.  
  
Draco had to drag Harry to the cell and, as he was also in pain with his open wounds, they practically crawled there and then lied on the floor.

“I am sorry. I am sorry, Draco, it is all my fault.”

Draco said nothing.

“What does it mean, that we’re on the list?”

Draco spoke softly. “Cox rents the whores to the other inmates. There’s a list of the appointments.”

Harry got goose bumps. “In exchange of what?”

“In exchange of nothing, Potter. This is Azkaban.”

Draco sat back to the wall. “I tried. Sorry.”

“It’s my fault.”

“Kill me,” Draco whispered. “You promised.”

Harry thought about being left alone here in Azkaban, _on the list_ as Cox’s whore. But then he thought that Draco would get the Kiss on the day after. He’d be alone anyway. He got up and took the pillow.

“I’ve wrote some letters.” Draco took the letters from his mattress and gave them to Harry.

Harry took them and put them on his bunk. He went close to Draco with the pillow in his hands and sat besides him.

“I really thought we’d succeed. I messed it up.”

Malfoy said nothing.

“What’s the thing you’d wanted more to do once out of here?”

“Just kill me.”

“Please. Talk with me for a minute. Please. I promise I’ll do it. But… stay another minute here. With me.”

“Love,” Malfoy whispered.

“Love?”

“Yes. I’d like to know… how it is.”

“What… you… you didn’t...?”

“Obviously I’m not a virgin, Potter. I think that's clear enough.”

“It happened here in Azkaban.” Harry deduced.

“Well, not only the girls keep themselves pure for marriage.”

“Rape,” Harry whispered.

“Not really. They’ll put you back to the wall.” He explained, and Harry realized it was _his_ future Malfoy was talking about, that he was trying to prepare him. “They create a sort of… illusion of choice.”

“What does it mean?”

“You’ll be able to choose. Rape or accepting to do it. I was so… proud, you know. Well, of course you know. I didn’t accept it, at first.” He looked at him. “Potter, I suggest you to accept the very moment they’ll come. Don’t play hero. I know you don’t want, but you’ll give up, before or after. Everyone gives up. If you say no, they’ll beat you and do it anyway, and it will be more violent. They’ll make you take drugs… and when you’ll be dependent they… listen, if you accept to do it, is less violent. Many of them just want a bit of… physical contact. If you give it to them without complaining, they won’t hurt you too much. Some of them will even be kind.”

Harry felt some weight on his heart. He knew Malfoy was trying to help him, to give him some advice for when Cox would… and he also knew Malfoy was talking about himself.

“You never made love?”

Malfoy shook his head. “It wasn’t my fate,” he said. “As many cared to remind me, I’m not a… _lovable_ person.”

“Of course you are,” Harry whispered.

“What’s that, pity on the dead man walking?”

“No.” Harry caressed his leg. He trembled.

Harry thought of asking: _Do you wanna know how making love is?_  
But he moved his hand away.  
He took the pillow.

“Are you ready, Malfoy?”

Draco nodded.

Harry pushed the pillow on his face.


	19. The Gryffindor's beaters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here we are! Sorry for the long waiting. Here's the penultimate chapter. (Or better, that's the last one, but there will be also another - an epilogue telling the after.)  
> Hope you'll like it. Thanks for reading.

Draco started to shake a moment later and Harry let go. The pillow fell motionless on the cell floor as Malfoy was breathing fast to get air in his lungs. As soon as he found his voice he said: “Try again.”

“No. I’m sorry, Malfoy. I can’t.”

Something broke into Draco. “You promised!”

Harry lied on his bunk, closed his eyes and prayed. He tried to ignore Malfoy desperate cries: “You promised! You promised!”

He promised, but he could not keep that promise.

On Friday morning they came to get Draco. They handcuffed him and put the mask on his mouth, even if on Friday he was already so weak.

“Draco, I’ m sorry, I…” Harry felt guilty, he should have been strong enough to kill him. Draco didn’t answer, and how could he? He was gagged. He just looked away.

Harry was left alone in the cell.

Draco was brought to the Minister and awaited to go in front of the Wizengamot in a little room. Here was Potter, obviously not the real Potter. From the way he sneered, Draco was certain that asshole was Robbard himself.

“Well, well… here is the dirty Death Eater.”

With a quick wave of the wand, his mask was in his hands.

“Yes, there’s this, of course… but we have to take other precautions, don’t we?”

Draco spat at him, and he was hit by a Stinging Hex. He winced.

“First. You do love your mum, don’t you?”

Draco didn’t answer.

“You don’t want her case to be examined again.”

“No,” Draco whispered.

“No, _sir_. I’ve got your letters. They’re evidence. You don’t want her to be Kissed too, isn’t it?”

“No, sir.”

“So you’ll keep your pretty mouth shut today. You won’t say a word about who I really am or about who Jay Roxen is.”

Draco felt he could cry. He gritted his teeth. “No, sir.”

“Good. Last precaution. _Silencio_.”

And Draco’s voice was gone. Another spell, and he was gagged again.

“Go first,” Robbard said, gesturing to the corridor.

When Draco sat on the Chair, the chains didn’t chained him. He heard a cry.

“Draco! Draco!”

It was his mother. She was crying. Draco thought about his appearance. Scars, a prison uniform stained with blood. He just looked to his mother. What else could he do?

Ginny Weasley was there with Potter’s children. She was pale.

Then the loud sound of a hammer and Draco’s gaze went to the Jury. Some of them were the same that condemned him eleven years before. But there were new members: the Mudblood and the Weasel as Potter said, but also Neville Paciock. The Mudblood looked upset. If they were there, that meant they didn’t have a clue that Potter wasn’t Potter. He was so fucked.  
  


“Order, please.” The old Wizengamot member spoke. “Mrs. Malfoy, calm down or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

His mother apologized and sat. Draco felt so weak.  
  


“We’re here today on request of Auror Harry Potter, Saviour of the Magical Word and member of the Wizengamot to examine the case of Draco Malfoy, Death Eater.”

He listed any of Draco’s crimes.  
  


“Mr Potter, may you speak.”  
  
Robbard looked at the Jury. His soul was rotten, but those were Potter’s eyes, green and magnetic, and that was Potter’s sweet face, and they loved him the moment he looked at them.

“I didn’t fight for a world in which the guilty people could hurt again. There are no good Death Eaters.”

Many nodded. “Any Death Eater based his life on racism and on the killing of innocents. No Death Eaters deserve to live over his victims. Draco Malfoy served Voldemort, he tortured, he tried to kill four people. Who can guarantee that the day he’s out of Azkaban he won’t do it again? We must protect the magical world.”  
He spoke and spoke and Draco felt hopeless. He hated Potter as he never hated him, for not having killed him, with the pillow, in the cell.  
  
“So, if you agree with me…”

“I think the accused should have the right to defend himself.” It was Granger’s voice.  
  
The chief of the Jury nodded. “Mr Malfoy, do you have something to say?”

A spell, and he was ungagged. But he could not talk. He looked at Granger, and then at Potter, and then at Granger again, and he shook his head frantically, trying to communicate her he wasn’t who he seemed, but how could she understand?  
  


“It’s clear he hasn’t anything to say in his defence,” Robbard-Potter said. “So, I’d propose to go on with the condemnation.”

So. That was the end. Draco looked at his mother, again she was crying, no, no, no…

“I’d like to ask something to Harry. To the Auror Potter.” Granger’s voice, again.

“Please,” the chief said.

Hermione stood. “What did Malfoy steal from Neville during our first Flying Class?”

Robbard-Potter hesitated.

“Objection, Your Honor. I fail to see how that could be relevant now.”

Draco watched Paciock. He looked upset.

“Rejected. It has to do with the accused.”

Robbard Potter just said: “I don’t remember.”

“My Remembrall, Harry!” Paciock seemed shocked. “How can’t you…”

_Go on, Mudblood_ , Draco thought, as a little spark of hope lit up in him. _Go on._

Ron Weasley touched Hermione’s arm. “Mione…”

_Don’t stop it now_ , Draco thought desperately.  
  


“Who were Gryffindor’s beaters?”

“Objection.”

“Miss Granger, how are these questions related to the case?”

“Your Honor, I assure you, the answer to this question could force us to declare a mistrial.”

“I’ll trust you. Rejected. Answer the question, Mr. Potter.”

“Come on, Harry.” Granger pushed. “Who were Gryffindor’s beaters?”

“I… I don’t remember.”

And Ron Weasley could not believe his hears. He stood. “ _You don’t remember?”_

Potter fought to stay calm. “I can’t see how that is relevant now.”

Ron Weasley pointed his wand at his best friend. “You’re not Harry. Who the fuck are you?”  
  


From that point, all Draco saw was chaos. Ginny Weasley cried. Robbard – Potter tried to Apparate, but he wasn’t fast enough, and Paciock disarmed him. Hermione hit him with a Binding Spell. Everyone started to yell. The Chief cried for order. Draco was loosing too much blood. It was hard to stay awake. On Friday he usually just lied on the bunk all day long. His wounds were bleeding a lot. He fought to keep his eyes opened, but he just lost consciousness.

  
  
  
“Malfoy? Malfoy?”

When he opened his eyes, the entire jury was upon him. “Jesus Christ,” he heard Granger’s voice. “He’s bleeding!”

Draco felt his back was wet.

“Ron, free him!”  
A spell, and Draco felt he could move his wrists.

“Malfoy!” Granger cried, and Draco loved her, loved that mudblood girl, the cleverest witch of the magical world, because she just saved his soul, and his life.

Draco gestured to his throat.  
“ _Finite incantatem_ ,” she said.  
“Potter…” Draco whispered as his voice was back.  
“Malfoy, your wounds! Tell me what to do! No spell works, tell me what to do!”  
“ _V-vulnera sanentur_ ,” croaked Draco.  
Granger paled hearing what was the origin of the wounds. She casted the spell more than once, and Draco felt better.

“Potter is in my cell… in Azkaban… cell 1483… Jay Roxen, he’s short… blue eyes…” he reached Hermione’s vest. She looked at Ron and Neville. “Go. Now! And come back with him! I’ll manage here.”

She was nice. So nice Draco felt as he was a real person for the first time in eleven years.

“Better?” She had asked softly touching his bleeding wrists. He had nodded and laboriously sat again on the Chair. She Evocated a glass of water for him. He had drunk, he was so thirsty, and in that absurd situation, he had felt so glad for that little kindness. Maybe the first little kindness in so many years.

“Malfoy, do you want to go the hospital? We can do this another time.”

He had shooked his head. “No.” He had hesitated. “Thanks.”

“Okay,” she had said softly, eyes wide open. “Can you tell us what happened?”

He had nodded.  
  
He told them everything. About Robbard, and Jay Roxen, and the interrogation. He told them about Azkaban, about his plan for keeping the other inmates at distance, about how his plan failed. He told them about his mother’s letters. He told them about who You-know-who really was.  
  


And in that moment Ron and Neville Apparated back with a stocky guy with blue eyes. Jay Roxen stood in front of Robbard and handed him a wand, as Ron and Neville pointed them at the prisoner.

“Cast the Finite,” Harry ordered.

“I want you to guarantee me a fair trial and…”

“Cast the fucking spell!” Harry punched him in the face.

Robbard obeyed.   
  


Under the Jury’s eyes, Jay Roxen turned in Harry Potter. In a bruised Harry Potter, with a swollen face, a broken nose and a missing tooth, but he was nonetheless the Saviour of the Magical World.

“I am Harry Potter,” Harry roared, finally with his voice. “I am Harry Potter, and you must listen to me.”

  
At the end of the trial, Draco was a free man. Potter had persuaded the Jury that if not for Draco, he’d be dead in Azkaban. He didn’t say what Draco had did to help him, and Draco was glad he didn’t. Harry had reviewed his precedent statement, as new elements came out during that mission that wasn’t a real mission. He had spoken for hours. The Jury asked Draco why he didn’t defend himself on his first trial, if he could explain why he had committed the crimes he had committed. He just answered: “I was sixteen.” He hadn’t other ways to justify himself. They acquitted him in the end.  
  
Robbard was sentenced to twenty four years in Azkaban, exactly like Draco. But Potter wasn’t satisfied. “I’ll ask for another trial.” He warned Robbard. “I'll ask the Kiss.”

Draco knew what he had to face now. His mother, and his bride, and his baby and Real Life. He knew that it would be hard. But he was free. It felt like a dream.

He wasn’t expecting that Potter would hug him in front of the entire court.   
“Thanks God,” he had said. “Thanks God. Jesus Christ, Malfoy, thanks God I didn’t kill you!”

Draco laughed. “ _Jesus Christ_ ,” he repeated. “For Circes, Potter, promise you won’t never be an undercover agent again!”  
  
Potter was laughing and crying at the same time. “We walked out of there alive. As you said.”

“You should thank the Mudblood.”

“I should thank _you_.” Potter kneel in front of him and kissed him in front of the entire Wizengamot. “It’s over, Draco, it's over.” He said.

“I’d say it had just begun,” Draco whispered.

  
  
  
  
---  
  
  



	20. The After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, the epilogue! I can't believe I was able to translate the entire story! I thank you so much everyone who has read and left comments and appreciate my story over my grammatical mistakes :D <3 I hope in future I'll translate something else for you <3 <3 <3

To say that Draco Malfoy at the end of that trial was tired would be an euphemism. He was worn out. But still there were many things to face.

His mother hugged him so tight Draco started to shake. Nobody had hugged him in so much time, except for Potter, one minute before. But that hug was different. Draco drown in his mother’s arms. Her love was unconditioned. It didn’t matter if he was wrong or right, if he was guilty or innocent, it didn’t matter if he was dirty and scarred and smelling. She would always love him.

But Draco knew that with Astoria was a different matter. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Neither he wanted his son to see him like this, even if he was maybe too little to remember. But if that would be his first memory of his dad…

“Wait,” he said. “Wait here a moment, please.”

He took his Azkaban’s box. As soon as he was acquitted, someone from the Minister was gone to take it, to give him back his wand at the end of the trial, as for tradition. But in the box there were also his clothes.

He found a toilet. Looking at the mirror made him felt bad. He hadn’t seen himself for a long time. He slowly undressed and he took out the wand. His hands were shaking so bad. Would he remember how to? Would his wand answer to him? He casted a shaving spell. It worked. But now his scars were even more evident. He casted another spell to cover the scars, and another to clean himself. He put on his clothes and his shoes. He glanced at the Azkaban’s uniform on the floor. With a last wave of his wand, he set it on fire.  
  
He looked at the mirror again. He almost recognized himself.

He went back to his mom.

“Let’s go,” he said.

  
“It is very beautiful.”  
He had asked his mother to meet Astoria without her. He needed to speak with her alone. She was in the living room, in her hands there was an embroidery of a lotus flower.  
“Did you make it?”  
She looked at him and said nothing, as she was looking for the right words.  
Then she said: “Scorpius’s asleep.”  
Draco nodded. “Astoria, I’d like to talk to you.”  
She hesitated. Then she nodded.  
Draco sat near her on the couch.  
“I was acquitted. I’m free.”  
She looked upset, but didn’t move. She was pretty, Draco thought. She could have had any man if she hadn’t marry… him.  
“I thank you for… for giving me a son.”  
She didn’t answer.  
“I wanted to say to you… you don’t have to be with me. Or to have me in the house. If you want… if you want to divorce, we can do that. Or if you want that we just separate. If you can give me a few days I’ll… I’ll search for another place to stay. But I’d like you to allow me to… see my son.”  
She winced, but she didn’t spoke a word.  
“And I wanted to say that I… I am sorry for how things had been. A marriage… shouldn’t be like that.”  
“No. It shouldn’t be like that,” she whispered.  
“I hated them, you know. For chaining me, and gagging me. It was the worst thing. I knew you were frightened and I wanted to speak to you, to caress you, to kiss you, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything.” Draco tried to hold his emotion. He had feared to talk with a stranger, but that horrible memory bound them.  
“I cried a lot,” she suddenly said.  
“Yes,” Draco answered with a lump in his throat. “You cried a lot.”

“You’re different.” She said. She touched his hair, moving them away from his face. “You had scars.”  
One tear crossed Draco’s cheek. Just one. “I covered them with a spell.”  
“Why?”  
“To be nice for you. Sorry. It was stupid.”  
“No,” Astoria whispered. “It isn’t. It’s sweet.”  
Draco didn’t know what to say.  
“I’d like to see them.”  
He nodded. He casted a Finite on his face.  
Astoria looked at him for a while. “You’ve got others, right?”  
He nodded.  
She spoke softly. “I’m sorry.”  
“I can cover them.”  
“No, I’m sorry… I never thought about how’s been for you.”  
Astoria broke him with those words. Draco stayed silent, feeling shattered.  
“Listen,” she said. “I cannot answer right now. About divorce. But this is your home, and I don’t want you to go away, for now.”  
Legally it’s yours, Draco thought. But he said nothing. He didn’t want to interrupt her.  
She went on. “We can try to know each other. I can’t promise anything else now.”  
Draco hesitated. Then he thought that she deserved the truth, and he deserved to tell her the truth, even if that would mess it all up. His heart beated so fast. He said it.  
“Astoria, I’m homosexual.”  
She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she suddenly smiled. “That’s not a problem for me.”  
Draco was so upset for his confession and the possible consequences that it took a moment before he registered her words.  
“It isn’t?”  
“I was so afraid of you.” She confessed. “I thought you were a killer.”  
“I did bad things.”  
“You’ve been acquitted.”  
“But I did those things, Astoria.”  
“Did you kill?”  
He shook his head.  
“So you’re pure. Toujours pur,” she whispered. Still pure. He was still pure, he hadn’t killed anyone.  
“Listen, I’ve always known that our is a marriage of convenience. I never thought we could love each other, not in the romantic meaning of the word anyway. The thing that scared me was that my son’s father was a Death Eater. I was afraid of you. I was afraid for Scorpius.”  
“And you aren’t… now?”  
“No,” she said.  
“Why?”  
“I don’t know. Because you’re kind.” She hesitated. “Your mother told me anything about you. She always speaks about you. About how sensitive you are, and sweet. But I thought her love towards you made her blind. Instead…”  
“Instead?”  
“Maybe she was right. I don’t know. You seem to be like that. Sensitive.”  
Draco had no words.  
“Do you want to meet your son, Draco Malfoy?”

*

When he saw Harry again, Draco was holding Scorpius in his arms in Malfoy Manor’s garden. Harry came alone. He and Ginny were going through a bad crisis. He could not accept that she believed Robbard was him, and she was upset for the kiss at the trial.  
“He’s a very beautiful child,” Harry said.  
“He’s the most beautiful child in the world, and he’s mine.” Draco seemed to only have eyes for his son by the moment he saw him. He held him anywhere he went and he spoiled him rotten at any occsasion.  
“And with Astoria?”  
“It’s fine,” smiled Draco. “We are getting to know each other.”  
“You choose to lie to her,” Harry accused him. “You choose to lie to yourself.”  
Draco shook his head. “You’re wrong. She knows, Potter. She knows I’m gay. I told her.”  
“Did you?”  
Draco nodded.  
“And…?  
“We respect our spaces. Maybe we’re freer this way than how we could ever be otherwise. The marriage keep up appearances, my mom is happy, her parents are happy, we have a wonderful son and otherwise… what happens out of this house remains private.” 

Harry gave him a strange look. “And what do you do out of this house?”  
“Right now I’m here with you.” Draco answered. “So beautiful, isn’t it? I thought I should wait another thirteen years to see the sky again.”  
“I want to kiss you,” Harry said.  
Draco turned to look at him. He smiled. The sun shone on his hair, on his pearly scars. There was a shy wind.  
“Do you?”  
“Yes”  
“And what are you waiting for?”  
Harry kissed him.  
His son was playing on the grass near him.  
Draco close his eyes and kissed him back.  
For a second he thought about all those times of desperations, those times in which he thought to quit the game, to surrender. He thought of all those pains, all the injustices suffered, all the abysses that made him think that it was not worth living.  
But he was wrong.  
It was worth it. Just for this moment.  
Because, in this moment, Draco Malfoy was happy.

  



End file.
